


Cling to the Ways of My Name

by engagemythrusters



Series: Right Behind You [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: COE Fix-it, F/M, Kid Fic, M/M, Not Miracle Day Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21728569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/pseuds/engagemythrusters
Summary: If Ianto Jones thought his legacy would die out with him in Thames House, he was dead wrong.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Right Behind You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586635
Comments: 35
Kudos: 208





	1. Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to The House of the Dead. Will explain references to anyone who needs them.  
> Also? Definitely had started writing this before Expectant was announced, so who was the real copycat here? (Just kidding--I bow before my Big Finish gods... please give us more... please...)

Delayed shock, Jack Harkness decided, was horrible. Delayed shock when it came to the death of his lover and his grandchild, both by his own hands, was possibly one of the worst things Jack had ever felt in his entire life. That was saying something, coming from a man of twenty-one centuries in age. 

Jack sat in the flat of one Ianto Jones, deceased, and wondered what the point was. What the point of existing really was, because at the moment, it felt like there was none. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there were thoughts of the grandfather paradox. It just might work with him. Universal Facts like Jack might successfully cause and maintain that paradox. Then again, Universal Facts like Jack might be able to survive that paradox, too.

Burying his face in his hands, Jack took in deep breaths and tried not to scream. This was sacred ground; hallowed halls where Ianto Jones once walked. They didn’t deserve to be tainted by Jack’s rage against the universe, against all of time and space. They didn’t deserve to be tainted by _Jack_. Jack made this mess. Jack killed Ianto. Ianto was dead.

Nothing mattered anymore.

There was a wicked part of him, a sick, twisted, treacherous, _vile_ part of himself that he hated so much it made him ill, reminded him that this wasn’t the end. Jack would eventually move on, get over Ianto, and face more heartbreak. Jack took in more deep breaths, still withholding that scream, and cursed every single fibre of that wretched part of him.

Eventually, Jack was able to pull his face from his hands and look at that same spot on the wall he had been staring at for the past month. As soon as Jack had been released from the clutches of the government after what tied as the worst day in Jack’s very long life, he had come home to Cardiff, home to Ianto’s flat, and cleaned up the mess that the “anti-terrorist” operatives had made when they had searched the flat roughly four days before. Once Jack had, to the best of his abilities, returned the flat to its near impeccable state, he had sat down in the very centre of the sofa and stared directly ahead and let the tears fall. Jack returned every day for the past month to do the same thing every day; sit on the sofa and stare at the wall and miss Ianto Jones.

An hour passed before Jack realised, the small clock on the wall chiming out a mocking tune, scolding him for another hour spent without its owner. Jack glared at it, as if it would stop if he just directed all of his hurt, anger, and rage in its direction. It did not stop.

He reached out a hand and stroked the cushion of the sofa absently. If Ianto were here (though he wouldn’t be, not at this hour of the day), they’d probably be eating, having sex, watching telly, or a combination of some of those. Instead, Jack was alone, not eating, having sex, or watching telly, because food and telly didn’t interest him anymore and because sex was off the table. Point blank.

There was a loud knock on the door. Jack started. That was not one of the sounds of Ianto’s flat. Ianto’s flat sounded like the ticking of that stupid clock and Jack’s quiet sobs. But, for a single, shining moment, Jack thought that Ianto would come through the door, grumbling about the dismal weather (“Bloody Cardiff,” Ianto had always muttered). The moment passed as quickly as it came, as Jack remembered that Ianto had never needed to knock for access to his own damn flat.

Jack struggled to keep in the fresh wave of tears. Stupid of him, to be fooled like that. Now he didn’t want to get the door, or even bother to wonder who was on the other side.

Unfortunately, the pounding on the door forced him to get up. At the very least, he had to tell whoever it was to go away and leave him in peace.

The sight of Gwen Cooper on the other side of the door nearly made him slam it shut. He was not in the mood to talk to her. He was far too emotionally and mentally tired to talk to her. Physically, too, now that he was thinking about it. He was _exhausted_. Also, Gwen was carrying curry, and he did not want that in the flat. Ianto’s scent was already beginning to fade, and Jack wasn’t about to let curry chase it away faster than Jack was ready for.

“That is not coming in,” Jack stated, looking at the bag.

“Fine by me,” Gwen said hastily. “Just let me in.”

He frowned at her for a second, then noted the pallor of her face and stepped aside to let her sprint to the bathroom. He stooped down to collect the bag she had dropped outside the door. He wasn’t planning to bring it in, but he didn’t want the food spilling out over the hall floor. The least he could do was set it upright for Gwen to pick up on her way back out after she finished heaving her stomach out into Ianto’s toilet.

Actually, the sound of Gwen’s gagging was making him feel rather nauseous. Add to that the smell of the curry, and…

Jack found himself sprinting to the loo after Gwen.

“Move,” he ordered her.

She gave him a confused look, but thankfully managed to scoot out of the way of the toilet before the contents of his roiling gut emerged.

By the time he was finished, he was certain he had nothing left in his stomach. He hadn’t been eating much lately, and he couldn’t quite stop retching until that not-much was completely out of his system. He rested his forehead on the edge of the bowl and spat into the putrid liquids below. God, now it reeked of vomit. He’d have to clean the toilet with those harsh cleaning products, the ones that stank so much it burnt nose hairs. That was really going to flush out Ianto’s scent, wasn’t it? The whole place was going to smell of bleach and curry and Ianto's wonderful smell would be long gone…

A tentative touch to his shoulder had him jerking away from the toilet. Gwen pulled the hand back slowly, watching Jack very carefully. Jack belatedly realised he was heaving out quiet sobs, and he raised his own shaky hand to swipe tears and excess vomit from his face.

“Jack…” Gwen started.

“Don’t.”

Gwen ignored his pleas, just like he thought she would. “You have to let this place go.”

“No, I don’t. Flat’s under my name, now.” It was true. Changing the rent was the first things Jack did when he could finally bring himself to _do_ things.

“Rhiannon wants to collect his things.”

“She can’t have them.”

“Jack…”

“Torchwood policy,” Jack said, purposefully omitting that they’d forgone those policies when Tosh died. Tosh… she was his fault, too. “They go in storage.”

“Then put them there,” Gwen challenged.

“No.”

“You can’t live here. It’s not health—”

“I don’t live here,” he said stubbornly. He lived in the re-pilfered SUV—not that he’d tell Gwen that.

“I don’t care, Jack,” she sighed. “I don’t care if you sleep in his bed, on his roof, or ten miles away. You can’t keep coming here like this.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Then she began to spout some bullshit about it not being what Ianto would have wanted, while Jack did his best not to listen. He didn’t want to hear it. He focused on anything in the room but Gwen. Ianto’s ugly shower curtains. The chipped tile three away from the door. The lingering traces of vomit that wafted through the air, because Jack forgot to flush after he’d finished throwing up his guts.

Jack found himself over the toilet bowl again, dry heaving this time.

“Are you alright?” Gwen asked when he had calmed himself down.

His laugh echoed in the toilet bowl, sounding broken and sad even to his own ears. He sat up again, this time taking care to flush the toilet.

“I’m serious,” Gwen said. “I’ve never seen you sick before. Ever.”

He gave a halfhearted shrug.

“If there’s something wrong with you, I’d like to know.”

“What good is it going to do?” he asked wearily. “Not like it’ll kill me.”

And if it did, it wasn’t as if he would mind.

“Actually, it _can_ kill you,” she said. “Just because you don’t stay that way, doesn’t mean it doesn’t.”

Jack flinched. Ianto used to say the same thing. Jack could still hear that harsh tone Ianto had used one night after a careless run-in with a Weevil.

“Please,” Gwen said. “Humour me.”

Jack wanted to ask what the point was again but didn’t bother. The quickest way to stop a badger from badgering was to let it think it badgered itself out.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m tired. My stomach feels weird. Food has been less appealing than usual. It’s probably just a bug. I’ve had it for a week, it should go away soon. Happy?”

“No, not particularly,” she said. She sounded weird. Jack looked over at her. She looked weird.

“What?” he asked.

“Is…” She hesitated, the odd look not leaving her face. “Is there anything else?”

Jack frowned. “I mean, I’ve been needing to piss a lot, but I didn’t think you needed to hear that.”

Gwen stared at him for quite some time. It was very uncomfortable, because they were still sitting on the tiles of the bathroom, and because Gwen had never stared at him like that before. It was unnerving.

“Stay here,” she said abruptly, getting to her feet.

“What?” He got up and followed her out of the bathroom. “Weren’t you just telling me I should stop staying here?”

“I know what I said,” she said. “And that applies to every other day but today. Just… for today, right now… stay right here.”

“Why? Where are you going?” he asked, still following her back to the front door.

“First to throw that curry out,” she said, picking up the offending bag and holding it gingerly, away from her nose. “And then… well. Just stay here.”

Then she hurried down the hall, Jack watching her go until she turned the corner to the stairs and walked out of view. Jack, baffled, stepped back into the flat and closed the door.

“What?” he asked again, as if someone would tell him what the hell was going on.

After a while of standing near the door, he began to wonder if she was ever going to come back. He returned to his spot on the sofa, this time taking a risk and curling up on his side, planting his face in a pillow. Smelled like Ianto. But for how much longer? Jack wished there was a way to bottle Ianto’s scent. He also just wished Ianto was here. Christ, he would do anything, _give_ anything, to have Ianto back.

Gwen did return. She held a small bag, one that didn’t smell of curry or any other food, and she scowled down at Jack on the sofa.

“Loo,” she told him.

“What?”

“Loo,” she repeated. “Now.”

Too bewildered to argue, Jack got up from the sofa and trailed behind her back into the bathroom. When they were in there, Gwen reached into her bag and pulled out a long, thin box. Jack’s eyes went wide, and he temporarily lost the ability to speak. Gwen reached out and grabbed his hand, placing the box in it and curling his fingers around it. She gave the hand a reassuring pat, then let it go, and Jack just held it there, staring at the pregnancy test.

“ _What_?” he asked, for what felt like the billionth time.

“Jack, people do not have a stomach bug for a week,” Gwen told him gently.

“So you think I’m _pregnant_?”

“You just described my symptoms to me,” Gwen said. “This is Torchwood. It’s a possibility.”

Jack wanted to point out that “this” wasn’t Torchwood anymore, because Torchwood died the very second Ianto did. He wanted to inform her that “this” was, in fact, a fifty-first century thing, if it was anything at all. And it wasn’t. He wasn’t _pregnant_.

“Just take the test,” Gwen said. “For me. Please.”

Jack looked between her and the test a few times, then relented. Badgers and their badgering, he remembered. Just have to let them badger it out.

Gwen left him in the bathroom to do his business alone. Jack took the opportunity to think through the lunacy of it all. Pregnant? No. No way. For starters, he’d never _been_ pregnant before, and he couldn’t _get_ pregnant; he’d had an operation before he’d joined the Time Agency to ensure the safety of the timelines. Jack supposed that could have been reset when he turned immortal, when Rose gave him an overabundance of life. But even then… it had been a century and a half of fucking and making love that he’d had since then. So why now? Jack thought about it and realised there also were those nearly two thousand years buried alive, filled with celibacy and a constant cycle of healing, healing, healing. He hadn’t been conscious for most of it, but he knew there came a point where he was healing before the dirt could crush his chest in again. Maybe it was enough to restart something in him.

“Jack?” Gwen called from the other side of the door. “Have you even started yet?”

Jack glanced down at the test again. All that supposing and theorising would mean nothing if he was not actually pregnant. And he wasn’t. Was he?

The test said to wait three minutes. Those three minutes felt longer than all those years beneath the dirt. Three minutes of this sort of anxiety were more than two thousand years of atonement.

When the time came, he called Gwen in to look at it. He couldn’t bring himself to look. Gwen seemed to understand, because she didn’t comment, merely picking up the test with caution and glancing down at it herself. He surveyed her carefully, but her face never let up.

“I’d ask who the father is,” she said eventually, “but I don’t think even _you_ could be that heartless for it to be anyone else but… _him_.”

Jack felt the floor rise up to his knees, felt gravity tear him downwards. He tried his hardest not to keel over sideways, but it was a close thing.

“No,” he breathed. “No, no no no no.”

“Sometimes,” Gwen continued, as if he hadn’t collapsed in front of her, “sperm can stay in the system for a few days. Whenever you two must have found a chance, it… it must have stuck.”

Jack wanted to point out that he’d been obliterated after their last time together. Blown to smithereens, with only a fucking _arm_ left to grow back from. But there was no point in saying it, was there? It didn’t change the fact that Ianto was the last person he had sex with, didn’t change the fact that Jack was still _pregnant_.

Oh, god.

“Listen, I called Martha while you were waiting,” Gwen said after a very long silence. “She’s coming down to um… to check it out.”

“And what if I hadn’t been…” He didn’t say it out loud. He couldn’t. That would mean it was really _real_.

“She wanted to pay her respects, anyway,” she said quietly. “She was sorry she missed the funeral.”

Jack knew Gwen’s eyes were on him, studying him for his reaction. He didn’t have one to give her. She knew he couldn’t go to the funeral. Jack had killed Ianto. He didn’t deserve to stand over the body of his lover to mourn, not when Jack had made that happen. Maybe that made him a coward. He didn’t care. He already knew he was a coward, anyway.

“Come on,” Gwen said after another silent stretch.

She reached a hand down. Jack stared at it until she thrust it at him again, then took it and let her help him to his feet.

“We are getting out of here,” Gwen said. “We are going to my flat, we are going to get some food in you, then we are going to wait for Martha to visit. And then we are going to find you somewhere else to stay.”

Jack wanted to object, and it must have shown on his face, because Gwen was having none of it.

“You are finding a new place to say,” she reiterated vehemently. “Then we’ll see where we go from there.”

She took his hand and dragged him from the bathroom without another word. He couldn’t even bring himself to protest it. He just tried to cling onto whatever thoughts that could stick in his brain.

He caught a glimpse of the pregnancy test before she pulled him out of the bathroom, and it mocked him by simply _existing_ , this thing of white plastic, expecting him to be happy as it blatantly told him “you are pregnant!” with two lines that Jack could not erase.

* * *

Rhys Williams did not bat an eye when Gwen brought Jack home to him. Jack thought that was very generous of him, considering, well, their entire history together. However, the hissed “What do you mean, _pregnant_?” that was louder than Rhys probably realised was not at all unexpected. Jack watched with little interest as Gwen shushed her husband and related to the best of her ability what had occurred in the past hour or so.

Jack sat on their sofa, rifling through the various magazines littered on the coffee table. One was about motherhood. Jack dropped that one instantly and reached for one on… home improvements? Whatever. It was better than the other one.

Gwen and Rhys returned their attention to him, the _present_ him, and asked him what he felt like for dinner. Rhys was eyeing him warily, probably still confused about the whole pregnancy ordeal while also unwelcome to the idea of feeding Jack Harkness. Jack couldn’t blame him. He scrounged up whatever politeness he had to say he wasn’t hungry, thanks, and they didn’t have to feed him. Gwen glared at him and told him under no circumstances was he skipping dinner, and Rhys loudly mentioned that he was in the mood to make shrimp scampi, which pleased Gwen enough to get her off her angry rant and made Jack feel a little less like he was intruding on their lives.

The scampi was good, and neither Gwen nor Jack ran to the toilet. Oddly enough, Jack wanted curry now. Or fish and chips. Or both. Yeah, both. The cravings didn’t start this early, did they?

Jack immediately shut down that train of thought. He was not thinking about babies. He was not thinking about _this_ baby. He wasn’t even thinking about the fact that there _was_ a “this baby.”

“Thank you for dinner,” Jack said at what felt like the appropriate moment. “I should probably leave you two in peace now.”

He stood up while Gwen yelled at him to sit back down and as Rhys made some not-really-protests.

“You’re staying here,” Gwen told Jack. “Sit down and drink your fucking water.”

Rhys and Jack raised their eyebrows at the tone and language, and Jack lowered himself back into his seat. Gwen glared at him until he took his glass and drank another sip of water.

“There,” Gwen said. “Now. We don’t really have much room for you, but you can sleep on the sofa tonight.”

Jack opened his mouth, but Gwen held up a hand before he could get a word in.

“Martha’s coming here tomorrow to check you out. You can run off to god knows where afterwards, but for now, you’re _staying put_ ,” Gwen said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jack mocked.

Gwen glared harder and he lost his bravado.

“Thank you,” he said, sincerely and quietly. “Really.”

“You’re welcome,” Gwen replied. Rhys just took a sip of his wine.

The evening wore on slowly. Jack supposed that happened, when one was waiting anxiously for something. He was waiting for Martha to come tell him this was a fluke, a prank, a lie. Something, _anything_ other than the truth, because the truth was too much for Jack.

That night, he didn’t sleep. He never did anymore, because the one person who could get him to sleep was gone and buried, and because if he tried on his own, the nightmares would overwhelm him. Instead, he laid himself out on Gwen’s sofa and studied the ceiling intently, trying out that Venusian monk meditation technique he had never quite mastered. The last time he tried this was three nights before his last day on the Valiant. He still sucked at it, he concluded five hours later, when he accidentally sent himself too close to sleep.

* * *

Jack realised very quickly that one of the worst ways to wake up was screaming at a close friend, telling them to run, because some unknown entity created of Jack’s worst fears was going to kill them. Martha, bless her heart, took this very well, considering everything.

“I think I’ll be alright,” Martha assured him when the fog in Jack’s mind cleared. She helped him sit up on the sofa, seating herself down next to him as he shook the last images of his dream out of his system. “You okay?”

“Venusian meditation. One wrong move and trance becomes deep sleep.” Jack aimed his tone toward jocular and light, far from the shaky, panicked feelings that still clung tight to him.

“Must’ve been a very deep sleep,” Gwen said from behind him.

Jack prided himself on not jumping twelve feet in the air, managing to merely turn to face her without so much as a flinch.

“You were out for a good ten hours,” Gwen finished. “Had to shake you awake.”

“Oh,” Jack said.

Well, that beat the last time he tried it. He had only been seven hours into his accidental nap before the Master got bored of him and shot him through the head. Actually, _that_ might have been the worst way to wake up: through death.

“Ready to run some tests?” Martha asked.

No.

“Sure.”

“Good,” Martha said. “I know Owen—”

Jack winced.

“—used to have that Bekaran deep tissue scanner,” Martha continued, having either ignored or not seen Jack’s reaction, “but we don’t have one of those at UNIT.”

“UNIT knows about this?”

“No, no,” Martha reassured him. “I didn’t think you’d want them to know. Hell, _I_ didn’t want them to know. But I did manage to nick a few things from under their nose.”

Martha pulled a bag onto her lap and started rifling through it. First, she pulled out a med kit that she set aside on the coffee table, followed by a handful of crinkled wrappers (from sticking plasters to cookies), a small box whose contents Jack couldn’t even begin to guess at, a file labelled “Capt. Jack Harkness” that was stuffed with papers (Jack wanted to phone up UNIT to yell at them for a good few hours about privacy and the invasion of), and finally, something that looked an awful lot like that singularity scalpel of Owen’s.

“You’re not blowing my innards up,” Jack immediately said.

“Relax,” Martha said, rolling her eyes. “It’s just a Tellernian hand scanner. All it’ll do is scan.”

“Right,” Jack said.

He kept a suspicious eye on the so-called “scanner” as Martha primed it. Once, Owen had accidentally tested the singularity scalpel on himself and blew up his own appendix. Thankfully, it was after he had died the first time; therefore, it had caused him no lasting problems. Still, the clean-up had been rather disgusting, and Owen had bitched for three days after the event. It was not something Jack was willing to repeat.

“Okay,” Martha said after a short while. She stood up and motioned for him to stretch out on the sofa. “It’s quickest if you’re lying flat.”

“Maybe I should lay on the floor, then. I’m far too long for the sofa.” Jack was well aware that he was stalling.

“Doesn’t matter,” Martha said. “Take your pick.”

Jack floundered a bit, unsure whether he preferred the safety of the floor or the comfort and shielding of the sofa. Eventually, Martha rolled her eyes and told him to stop fidgeting so she could do her job, and so he laid out on the sofa and stayed absolutely still.

Martha ran the scanner over his full body first, then repeated that over him again, again, again, each pass getting shorter, until the scanner had a layout of his internal organs. Then she localised over his stomach, letting it get a read on the thing inside of him.

“You can sit up now,” Martha said after roughly fifteen minutes.

Jack returned to a seated position as Martha began to pace, going over the readings.

“Sorry,” she said. “Takes a little bit to translate. If you want, you can see the baby’s picture while we wait.”

“I want to see it,” Gwen said when Jack didn’t respond. He blinked. He’d forgotten she was still here.

Martha handed it over to Gwen. Jack expected a squeal or an adoring sigh, but she was thankfully silent. She gazed down at the screen of the scanner with a bland yet scrupulous expression, then passed it back to Martha. Jack’s attention went along with the scanner back to Martha.

“Oh. Okay,” Martha said when the scanner beeped. “You ready for this?”

Definitely not.

“Yeah.”

“Congratulations,” Martha said, taking the easy way out and not looking up from the readings on the scanner. “You’re officially pregnant.”

The world crashed down around Jack’s ears, but that didn’t stop Martha from dragging it down lower.

“Your baby is, as far as I can tell, completely healthy, all on track for being a normal embryo of exactly six weeks.”

“ _Six_ weeks?” Jack managed to choke out.

“That’s only a week younger than mine!” Gwen exclaimed.

Jack glanced back at her, but there was nothing on her face that stated she was already planning ahead to joint birthday parties or playdates. There was only confusion wrought on her face.

“But you _blew up_!” Gwen went on. “How could a baby survive that? That’s impossible, Jack!”

Jack was beyond caring if it was impossible or not. It was here, and therefore completely possible, so did it really matter if had disobeyed the laws of the universe not once, but twice? Three, four times, even?

“I’m an impossible thing,” Jack quoted.

Silence fell, partly because Gwen was still trying to work it out to herself, partly because Martha was staring sadly down at him.

“You know he didn’t mean that, right?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”

“He’d understand this, though,” she said. “I could call him. He could—”

“No,” he interrupted. “He couldn’t even save… no. Just no.”

Martha studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

The silence settled again. Martha hid behind the safety of her scanner, Gwen began to look thoughtful, and Jack tried to let it all sink in.

There was an embryo inside him. An embryo that would soon be a foetus. An embryo that would soon be a foetus, that would eventually become a baby. A _child_. A whole new human being created by and from and _for_ Jack. A whole new life for Jack to fuck up, just like he had fucked up everyone else’s.

“I shouldn’t have kids,” he whispered when he could find his voice.

Gwen and Martha’s eyes were on him in an instant, Gwen’s accusatory and Martha’s startled.

“Jack,” Gwen started. “You—”

“I just killed my _grandson_ , for god’s sake!” he shouted. “I murdered him! Steven! My own flesh and blood! I shouldn’t have kids! Kids should stay as far away from me as they can; I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them!”

Martha had a whole year of practising her impassive face, and Gwen had long learned not to subject Jack to her pity, so the two of them just stared at him with just a hint of reproach between them.

“It’s your choice,” Martha said eventually.

“Neither of us will think of you any differently,” Gwen added, though Jack knew that was a lie, because he also knew about Gwen’s July of 2004. But she played it on her face well, and Jack could almost believe that she wasn’t feeling now what she did when she had to make her own choice. “It’s okay.”

“Just… think of it quickly,” Martha said. “I brought something, just… just in case.”

Gwen looked sharply at Martha, possibly of the mind that this wasn’t something that could be rushed into, that this must be thought out thoroughly. But Jack didn’t need to think about this. Sure, he was a shit person and an even shittier father, who shouldn’t be allowed within the same vicinity as children, lest he destroyed their lives just as he did his own grandson’s, but… this thing inside him, this _child_ … it was Ianto’s.

All Jack had left of Ianto Jones could be boxed up in less than a day, shoved into a storage facility and never thought of again. All, that is, except this child. And this child was worth ten thousand times more than an old sofa and throw pillows. Could Jack really take that from the world? From _himself_? No. This child had to live, if only because Ianto Jones deserved to.

“I can’t keep it,” Jack said, “but I also can’t deny it the chance to live. I can’t do that to Ianto’s memory.”

Some of the tension seemed to ebb from Gwen, and he wondered if she was thinking the same thing. He doubted she would be willing to let go of the last thing she had of Ianto, even if she would have outwardly supported Jack, had Jack’s choice differed.

Martha, on the other hand, merely nodded and patted his hand gently. She didn’t understand, not the way Gwen did, but he still appreciated the sentiment all the same. She had cared about Ianto, too, even if she hadn’t loved him the way either Jack or Gwen had.

Gwen’s hand went to Jack’s shoulder, using it to stabilise her as she leaned over the back of the sofa to peer at the scanner still in Martha’s hands.

“Does that thing say if it’s a girl or boy?”

“No,” Martha said. “Testosterone doesn’t get produced until about week seven. I could check back in a week or so to see if it’s being produced or not.”

“Later.”

“What?”

“Later,” Jack repeated. “My gestation will take longer.”

“Really?” Martha asked.

“Yeah. Don’t know much of the science behind it, never really paid it any attention,” Jack said. “Failed year seven biology.”

“Let me guess, too busy staring at a nice pair of tits?” Gwen asked, squeezing his shoulder.

Jack smirked, though he felt no warmth behind it. “Two, actually.”

“I’m going to need you to tell me more about this,” Martha said. Jack looked up to see her face as serious as her tone. “Really. There’s no pregnancy I can base this off of in the twenty-first century. You’re going to have to give me a little help, here. I have to know what I’m dealing with.”

Jack held up his hands. “Like I said, I failed year seven biology. And also year seven history. So this’ll be a little rusty, but from what I remember, in the forty-third century, there was more of a push for—”

“Spare me the history lesson,” Martha cut through. “Just the things I need, please.”

“Alright.” Jack sat forward, sliding from beneath Gwen’s hand to rest his elbows on his knees as he wracked his brains for as much as he could remember. “Typical gestation period is forty to forty-five weeks. I think it averages at forty-two, but anything between forty and forty-five is good. Before forty, not so much.”

“So, mine’ll be out earlier,” Gwen said.

“Would have been anyway. You’re seven weeks along.”

“Oh, hang on, does that mean that scanner can check for testosterone production in my baby?”

“Why not before forty?” Martha asked, ignoring Gwen.

“Something about development? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that drastic, but I did know of a family that lost a boy from an early birth.” Jack’s mother cried for nearly two days after hearing about her nephew. “They tried again later, with a different parent. That one came out alright.”

“Anything else?”

“The babies tend to be smaller,” Jack said. “It’s harder to fit in a my body. Hips don’t change that much in thirty centuries.”

Jack tried to think of anything else, but all he could think of was how all his three uncles died the same day his dad did. His cousin went off and died at war. Everyone around him _died_.

“Are you sure it’s healthy?” Jack said.

“Scanner said so. I’m sure it’s fine,” Martha said. “Especially since you’re helping me help you. Can you remember more?”

He shook his head. “Not now. But if I do, I’ll let you know.”

“Good,” she said. “Well, if there’s nothing else?”

Jack and Gwen shook their heads.

“I’m going to head out, then,” Martha finished. “Anyone want to join me in visiting the gr—”

Gwen made a pointed coughing noise and Martha stopped short. Jack could feel both of their eyes on him, but he made no motion to acknowledge either of them.

“Right,” Martha said. “I, um… I guess I’ll go alone, then.”

Martha bade them both goodbye with hugs and kisses to their cheeks. Jack told her to give his regards to her family, and she told him he could do that himself. Martha congratulated Gwen, because Gwen was actually happy to be pregnant, and then she left, taking her bag and her scanner and her warmth.

“I should go, too,” Jack said as the door closed behind Martha.

“You don’t have to.”

“I should go and clean up,” Jack said. “Don’t want to leave Ian—the loo like that.”

Gwen’s hand found its way to his shoulder again.

“I took care of it,” she said softly.

He glanced up at her, confused.

“While you were sleeping,” she went on. “I don’t… I don’t want you going back there, Jack.”

“I rent the place.”

“I know,” she said. “I met your neighbours, and I told them if they ever saw you there, they were to call the police.”

“You did _what_?”

“And then I called Andy and told him that, should that ever happen, he was to lock you up until I came to get you.”

“You can’t do that!” Jack cried. “That’s—”

“Illegal? Unjust? Never stopped us before.” Gwen sighed. “Look, this… this thing you’re doing… it’s not healthy. It’s not okay. _You’re_ not okay.”

Jack looked away. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” she retorted. “You’re absolutely not. And if you were, I would slap you, because if you were okay after all of this, then you never deserved Ianto.”

“I didn’t deserve him, anyw—”

Then she really did slap him. The blow hit him across the back of his head, and he reeled away from her with a yell. It stung a little, but he was more shocked than anything. Gwen Cooper was hardly of the sort to stoop to unnecessary violence.

“Don’t you dare, Jack Harkness,” she snapped. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ spit on Ianto’s memory like that. He loved you; any blind fool could see that! _He_ decided you were worth it. Denying him that choice disgraces him more than pissing on his bloody grave.”

She took a step back then, placing her hands on her face. Jack watched the heavy rise and fall of her shoulders, listened to the quick sniffs and tiny huffs, and wondered if she had ever allowed herself to truly grieve in this past month.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She swiped a hand across her eyes, shaking her head.

“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s not your fault. I’m just…”

She threw a hand in the air, as if it would somehow articulate what she “was just.” Jack understood the sentiment, so he rose up and walked around the sofa to take her in his arms.

“I miss him,” Gwen cried into his shoulder. “I bloody miss him, Jack. So much.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me, too.”

Gwen sobbed into him for a good long while and Jack just held her, trying to cling on to the one good thing he had left. He had one precious thing that hadn’t yet been taken from him. He realised now that there was only one thing he could do to ensure her continued safety.

“Promise me you won’t go back there,” she whispered when she had cried it all out. “Promise me you’ll try to move forward.”

“I will,”’ Jack assured her. “I will.”

“Good.”

She pulled from his embrace, wiping away the last traces of snot and tears from her face. She smiled pathetically at him, and he returned it without any feeling behind it.

“So,” she said. “How do you feel about going down to the—”

“Gwen.”

“What?” she asked, her smile faltering at the look on his face.

“You were right,” he said. “I can’t stay here.”

Her face creased into a sad frown. “I didn’t mean _here_ here, I just meant—"

“I know. But I can’t… this place is like a graveyard, Gwen.” He shook his head. “Everywhere I look, there’s a ghost.”

“You don’t have to _leave_ ,” she said.

“But I do,” he said. He reached out and stroked a hand down her cheek. Maybe someday she’d understand he did this for her. “Have a wonderful life, Gwen. Don’t let it drift.”

He kissed her cheek just as her breath hitched, and he left her before her tears could breach through again. He closed the door softly behind him, knowing he took the coward’s way out. Wasn’t that what he always did? Wasn’t that what he was? Captain Jack Harkness: conman and coward. He’d conned four brilliant people into loving him, and now he was ducking out like a coward before he could finish the last of them off.

In the crisp autumn air outside, he took a deep breath, settling the tears and fears back down where they belonged. Out of sight, out of mind. He took his first step into lonesome freedom, and, feeling Gwen’s eyes on him through the window, kept walking onwards until he could no longer feel her hurt mingling with his own.

Maybe he would come back for her someday. Maybe he wouldn’t. He was not certain of anything anymore. All he knew was that he had to go, get out of here. Give himself another thirty-nine weeks off of fighting the ghosts that always haunted him, rip off the bandage of Gwen’s need for him. Give birth and then… well, who knew? A restart on life wasn’t an option, not when the one person who could give him that was dead, but maybe he could hide himself better after this was all said and done.

He called a cab, had the driver take him to the SUV, then got into his own car and drove to Ianto’s flat.

Just as Gwen had said, Ianto’s neighbours were on the lookout for him. The old lady who lived next door, the one Jack had used to flirt with when she told them to “keep it down over there!” was the one to approach him.

“That lady said to call the police if you ever showed yourself around here again,” she said. “How come she’s saying that? Did you kill that Mr. Jones?”

Oh, if only she knew.

“It was an empty threat,” Jack reassured the old woman. “She just doesn’t want me moping around here anymore. And I won’t be. I’ve just come to grab my things and go. You’ll never see me again, I promise.”

The old woman eyed him warily, but eventually pursed her lips and walked away. Jack sighed quietly to himself as the door to her flat snapped shut behind her, unlocking the door to Ianto’s flat.

It smelled like bleach. Maybe that was because Jack was expecting it to. At any rate, it didn’t smell of Ianto anymore. Jack took one moment to mourn the loss, then marched himself to the bedroom to grab the few clothes that hadn’t gone up with the Hub, the few pairs of shirts, pants, trousers, his braces and belts that he’d stored in Ianto’s wardrobe and dressers. He nabbed his old toothbrush and toothpaste from the bleach-filled bathroom, then stuffed it all in one of Ianto’s old travelling bags. Everything else he could buy on the go.

He was ready to leave the flat for good when he took one last look around the place. This had been his last home, his refuge. He could still remember coming in late with curry one night as it snowed outside to find Ianto sprawled out on that sofa, fiddling with the carpet and not actually watching the crap show that was playing on the telly. Jack smiled at the sofa and the memory, but the smile quickly turned into a sob, and he spent a while gasping for air as his grief jumped up a another level.

That stupid grandfather clock went off at some point. Jack cleared his throat and stood up straight, shoving the grief back down. Without really thinking about it, he made his way to Ianto’s bookshelf and grabbed the framed photo of Ianto and Lisa on that picnic they’d taken back when they had first started dating. Ianto had told him about that trip once. One of Ianto’s happiest memories, Jack had always assumed. He unzipped the travelling bag and placed the photo on top of his things, promising silently to never forget either of them, to honour and guard their memories in the way he couldn’t have done when they were alive. Then he rezipped the bag, shouldered it, and left the flat. He locked the door to the flat, sealing in the last remnants of the happiest time in his life.

That night, he took the first train he could catch out of Wales.

* * *

“I’m surprised you came.”

Archie Wallace and the Torchwood House was the closest Jack had come to home in nearly six months. Jack smiled at him, and the smile was just as close to being genuine. But this wasn’t home, and it wasn’t a real smile, and that was still enough to make Jack’s heart ache.

“I’m surprised you wanted me,” Jack replied.

“Well, nobody else wanted to overhaul the Archives, and I’d take you over nobody any day.”

“You couldn’t get one of those UNIT sycophants down here?” Jack asked.

“The higher-ups say they can’t spare anyone.” Archie scoffed. “Bloody UNIT. Take over Torchwood and they don’t even want to run it properly.”

“Why do you think I fought them so long?”

“Aye, only to quit when it got tough.”

The barb stung, but Jack didn’t let it show on his face. “Well. You have to know when you’re beaten.”

Archie eyed him momentarily, then shrugged. “Just never thought that Captain Jack would be one to be beaten. Not with the way you always talked.”

Jack said nothing. He was tired of all these expectations. He couldn't be everyone’s saviour. Everyone who thought he could be wound up dead. Plus, that’s just a lot of pressure to put on a guy. No wonder the Doctor scarpered off before the 456 incident. Jack was still absolutely pissed about that and wished the Doctor had chosen literally any other event to sit out on, but he could understand the reason behind it.

“Still,” Archie said. “I’m glad you’ve come. Don’t want to be doing this on my own, that’s for sure.”

“What needs to be done?”

“They want the 'A' section on the first level reorganised.” He shook his head. “Expect it done within a week.”

Jack frowned. “But that’s—”

“Five entire rooms,” Archie sighed.

“And there’s only us?”

“There’s my cats, but I’m not sure they’d be helping much.”

Jack ran a hand through his hair. He supposed he _had_ wanted a distraction. “Better get started, then.”

Archie showed him to one of the rooms in the Torchwood House. Archie always occupied the grandest bedroom when he came over to work on the Archives, and he gave Jack the option of either another of the grander rooms or another, blander room. Jack declined both, instead choosing a room that he knew to once have been Rose’s. The faint pull of _Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf_ dragged him that way every time he visited. The staff hired to keep the house clean (just the house, of course, and not the Archives below; they weren’t paid enough for that) kept the rooms in the condition that they’d been back when Queen Victoria herself had visited that first time, and therefore there were still traces that a woman once lived in the room, possibly before Rose had occupied it. Jack was fond of it, though. Fond of Rose and the comfort she’d brought to the room, even if it was only for a short while. The sentiment had lingered, and Jack enjoyed it when he could. Right now, he could use a little enjoyment, no matter how slight.

The first thing Jack did after walking in the room was zip open his travelling bag to take out the picture of Ianto and Lisa. He allowed himself a moment to trace his fingers over Ianto’s face, over that smile of his. Then he set it on the dresser, next to the old candlesticks. He always did this first, when he chose a place to bunker down, whether it be for a day or a week. Ianto and Lisa always got set up before he did anything else.

He hung up his clothes and set out his few other belongings, then came out of the bedroom and made his way down to the Archives.

Archie was down there already, starting to sort through very first shelf in the first room.

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” Jack asked, folding his arms and watching Archie pull out and then reshelve a file.

“They want the entire Archive resorted. Told them not to worry, that I’d have everything in that computer system your team had set up—”

Jack held back a wince. Toshiko and Ianto had worked hard on that. They’d treated it as if it were their own baby. Jack placed a hand over his stomach and tuned out of his thoughts.

“—but that wasn’t good enough for that UNIT lot. Said they wanted complete ease of access. So. Here we are.” Archie held out his hands, gesturing to the room. “They wanted to start last year around wintertime, but plans changed, so we’re starting it now. Doing the entire 'A' section, then the 'B' section later this year to get back on track. If this round doesn’t finish you off, I expect to see you then, too.”

“Not sure I’ll be around then,” Jack said.

Archie gave him a hard look. “Right. Well, there’s five rooms. Choose one and have it finished in two days.”

Jack threw him a salute. “Yes, sir.”

“None of that, now.”

Working in the Archives was every bit the distraction Jack had needed. There was hardly time to think as he pulled out misplaced files, filled in incomplete ones, reshelved the ones in stacks, and catalogued the missing files. It was gruelling work, if he was honest. He didn’t know how Ianto did it back then, and did it _well_ , especially when it on top of the dozens and dozens of other tasks he had to complete every day. 

Jack set down the file on Aldebaran and took a moment to himself. He put his hands to his stomach and rubbed a little. He had developed the habit of reaching for the baby whenever he thought of its father, though wasn’t sure if it was comforting or unsettling. It was probably a bit of both.

With a sigh, he picked up the file again and slotted it into the right spot on the right shelf, then picked up another file and glanced through it. He kept repeating the motion, over and over, until he was thinking solely of archiving, and not his missing archivist.

It took Archie four days to finish two rooms by himself, and three and a half days for Jack to finish his. They paired up to finish the biggest room ("Ap" through "Az") together, though they didn’t interact much. Archie started at 'Ap' and worked his way down, whereas Jack started at "Az" and cycled back up. Neither had much of a chance to talk to each other. Not until the second day, anyway.

A jarring, blaring noise startled Jack from the report on Augebanian wine and its effects on humans. He cast it aside on the nearest table and went off in search of the source of the noise. It was coming from the first room that was reorganised, and Jack went in to find Archie smacking an old computer. The noise cut off abruptly as Archie thwacked his hand down in a seemingly vital spot on the computer, then Archie sat down in front of it and began to read the bright blue screen.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked.

“Your Rift’s having a bit of a fit,” Archie said. “Not the first time it’s happened; I’ve been getting this back in Glasgow for about a month or so. This is the biggest it’s been so far. Whatever is happening to it, it’s happening soon.”

Jack’s brain was only processing one part of that information. “You’re getting Rift alerts?”

“Aye. Your boy set it up back when, just in case something happened to you lot.”

A jolt of _something_ went through Jack, and his hand lowered to his stomach.

“You keep doing that,” Archie said, looking down at Jack’s hand. “What, did you eat him or something?”

Jack pointedly ignored his thoughts on cannibalism and instead glared at Archie.

“Look, all I’m saying is you’ve gained a few,” Archie said. “And here I was, thinking you couldn’t change.”

It was true; Jack’s abdomen was starting to swell to a very noticeable amount. Jack had been passing it off as beer gut for the past few months, but it was getting to the point where that alibi was starting to become transparent to strangers. Jack had been hiding it in his coat as of recently, though he couldn’t get by with that much longer, either. Very soon he was going to have to go wall himself in some hidey-hole, so as to not get spotted and questioned by the general public. Pregnancy for other sexes was not even thinkable until the forty-second century, and Jack was not about to upset timelines.

“What’s up with the Rift?” Jack asked, ignoring Archie’s looks.

“Don’t know. Haven’t bothered to check yet. I was planning on just letting it happen, then letting some bloody stupid conspiracy group come up with a cover for me when aliens fell down from the heavens.”

And this was why Archie oversaw Torchwood Two, and not Three.

“Can you find out what it is?” Jack asked.

Archie shrugged. “Sure. Don’t know why you care. Not like you’ve been taking care of the Rift, anyway. That’s what UNIT’s for now.”

“Call it curiosity,” Jack said. Or a reason to go home.

If Archie saw through his thinly veiled excuse, he didn’t say. He tapped away slowly on the keyboards, pecking his index finger one key at a time. This was why Toshiko and Ianto had always loathed to interact with the man.

“It says the readings match up with files…” Archie squinted at the still very blue screen. “H519-12-b.”

“I’ll go look for it.”

“Hold on, you’ve seen the state of this place. What makes you think you’ll find it? It’s probably not even in the H section, for all we know.” Archie bent over to type again. “I’ll look through those digital records.”

Jack waited impatiently as Archie slowly pulled up files H519-12-b, his fingers curling around the frame of the chair Archie sat in. When the file came up, he sped through the words, taking it all in at twice the speed Archie did.

“The… House of the Dead. Well. Sounds like a lovely vacation spot, now, doesn’t it? Kids these days.” Archie made a disgusted noise. “All those bloody weirdos with their witchcraft and séances.”

“How long until the Rift fully opens?” Jack asked.

“Oh, I’d say a couple of days, at least. How come?” Archie’s brows knit together. “You’re not actually thinking of attending, now, are you?”

“Says that there’s a being from before time,” Jack said. “Siriath. Could be dangerous. UNIT might not be enough.”

“What, and _you’ll_ stop it? On your own?”

Jack kept on reading, noting the parts on death feeders and bending time. He was aware that Archie was eyeing him carefully.

“This isn’t because of that boy of yours, is it?”

Jack said nothing.

“Jack…” Archie sighed. “This won’t get him back.”

“Who said anything about that?” Jack stood up straight. “I’m fixing the Rift. If I happen to see someone from my past, then that’s just a side effect.”

“Wait, hold on, _fixing_ the Rift?”

“Yep.” He reread the part on the two worlds colliding in on each other. Just one explosion, and the Rift would go away for good. “It’s not like we want UNIT mucking about in there, is it?”

Then he sighed. “Been nice seeing you, Archie. Sorry to cut and run like this, but… Cardiff calls.”

“Jack, you can’t just go!” Archie called as Jack turned on his heel and walked away. “This is lunacy! One of those conspiracies! Jack!”

Jack took the lift up from the Archives and to the Torchwood House. He cornered a maid and told her that he’d be departing soon; no need to make two dinners. Then he went to his room, packed his things, took down the photo of Ianto and Lisa, and took his leave.

It was time to go home.

* * *

He was on his knees, staring at the spot that the House of the Dead used to be. The woman was still ranting and raving about her satnav and how she couldn’t be in the wrong place, she just couldn’t! Jack was just keeping himself from falling to bits.

Ianto didn’t have to have taken down Siriath. Jack could have had him in his arms right now. What had Ianto said? It would have been a shame to get him back, only to lose him again? A touch careless? Well. That about said it.

Jack stood up and brushed off his knees.

“Goodbye, Ianto,” Jack said to the ether.

Then he got himself a cab, rode back to his hotel, got to his room, and then broke down as he cradled the picture of Ianto and Lisa to his chest. Ianto would have told him how much of a teenage girl he was acting. Jack would give anything to hear Ianto tease him about it. Jack had gotten close, so fucking close, only to let Ianto slide through his fingers again. Archie had told him this was lunacy. He had been right. Jack was going mad, and the only remedy was Ianto Jones, now blown to bits, with any last remaining part of him sealed inside the Rift for good.

Jack gave himself the night to grieve, and the following day to pull himself back together. It was hard, losing someone twice, especially when the someone was Ianto and when the two times were so close together and the reuniting was so brief. Then again, Jack was certain that if he got Ianto back for any amount of time, it would always be too soon to lose him again.

The next night was when he finally sat up, took a deep breath, and reached for his mobile. He searched briefly through the numbers saved on it, then chose the one who would understand the best. He held the mobile to his ear and waited.

“Hello?”

“I was hoping this was still your number.”

“Fuck you, Jack Harkness,” Gwen said, but she sounded more tearful than cross.

“Hi, Gwen,” he said.

If he was honest, her voice made him feel a little better. She was slice of what was left of home, and someone who felt something close to what he was feeling: a great pool of emptiness where happiness should be instead.

“Where have you been?” she asked. He was glad the question wasn’t “why did you leave me?”

“Around,” Jack said. “Italy, France, Russia, China, America, Argentina… lots of places.”

“Christ,” she said. “You really did _go_ , didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Cardiff had been choking him. Little did he know, so was the rest of the world. “Can I ask you a favour?”

“Anything.” The conviction in her voice should have been terrifying. “What do you need?”

“My wrist strap.”

“Jack—”

“I know you have it. I just want it back.”

“Alright, fine. It’s a bit singed, mind you.”

Jack grimaced. “How singed?”

“I’d say you’d need to completely replace the leather.” There was a rustling on the other end of the phone. “Yeah. The strap’s a goner. Want us to do it for you?”

The way she said “us” meant “Rhys.” It was tempting, to make Rhys to do something ridiculously simple for him, but…

“No,” he said. “It’s fine. I just want it back. I feel naked without it.”

“I bet,” Gwen laughed. “When do you want it?”

“Soon as you can give it to me. I can meet you somewhere.”

“Knowing you, it’d probably be on the top of some solitary hill somewhere, all alone in the dark, moping your sorry arse off.”

Jack was thankful he didn’t have to force a smile on his face just to appease her. The one good part of phone calls: nobody saw him. “Yeah.”

“There’s a café near my house. A little quaint, but it’s cute—”

“No.” No coffee. Both for baby reasons and for… Ianto reasons. “His flat.”

“Jack, we’re not—”

“I need to put his things in storage,” he said.

There was a short pause.

“Alright,” Gwen said quietly.

“Tomorrow,” Jack said. “At noon.”

“Okay.”

Jack hung up before the conversation could go any further, then phoned Rhys separately to ask (or beg) him to take out Ianto’s furniture before then. After shouting at Jack for a while for mucking about with his schedule on such a short notice, Rhys agreed, if only because he loved his wife and didn’t think she should overexert herself pushing a sofa while pregnant.

Then he called up some room service and ate the hotel’s lukewarm food. He inhaled it with gusto, not because it was good, but because this baby was one hungry little bastard. When it was finished, he laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Used to be that he couldn’t eat and then try to sleep, because digestion would keep him awake. Now, he couldn’t sleep because baby got fussy around bedtime and kicked him quite a bit.

“Knock it off,” Jack sighed after a particularly unpleasant jolt.

Ears were fully developed around this stage, Martha had told him a while ago. However, this baby did not like using its ears, apparently, because another sharp kick came through.

“You can’t be doing gymnastics already,” Jack told it.

It didn’t kick, but it moved again, and Jack sat back up.

“How about I tell you a story,” Jack said. “Will that calm you down?”

After a moment of thought, Jack recalled a poem his mother had recited to Jack and Gray when they refused to settle down for bed. It was about a yellow fish who tried to become a person, only to find he was much better off being a fish. He couldn’t remember all the words, but he remembered the meter, so he wound up saying a bunch of “something somethings” to a beat that didn’t fit very well with English.

By the time he was done, baby was still fussing and not at all ready to let Jack pass out, no matter how weary Jack was.

Jack turned to the digital clock on the bedside table, which taunted him with its late hour. He sighed. Back before he was pregnant, it didn’t matter that it was this late. Now, Jack was tired all the time as the baby drained his energy away, and all he wanted was some sleep, where he wouldn’t have to think about Cardiff and the Rift and Ianto.

Jack’s eyes slid over to the picture of Ianto and Lisa. They smiled at him and he reached out, taking them in his hands again. He brushed a thumb over Ianto’s face.

“This was your father,” Jack told the baby. “You almost met him. Maybe you heard him yesterday. He had a nice voice, didn’t he? Much better vowels than mine.”

Actually, there had once been a Vortan that Ianto had disarmed using only the power of his voice. Well, Gwen too, but the Vortan had appreciated the timbre of Ianto’s soft voice over Gwen’s. And it had absolutely hated the way Jack had talked.

The baby must have done a summersault just then, because it felt… ugh. He blinked down at his stomach.

“What if I told you about your father?” Jack asked it. “Would you like that?”

If the baby was aware of him or his question, it had no response. Jack smiled. As long as it wasn’t protesting…

“One day, over in Bute Park, the Rift open wide and spat out a Vortan.” Jack frowned. “Can’t blame the Rift; I would’ve, too. Anyway, it was really, really mad, and your father made the _terrible_ decision to provoke it…”

Before Jack knew it, he was falling asleep as he told the baby about how Ianto saved the day when Jack and Gwen had been poisoned that one time nearly a year ago. The baby was finally still, and Jack’s chest felt lighter than it had in months.

* * *

The flat was dusty. Rhys and his mates had stirred it all up when they’d taken out the bed, sofa, coffee table, and all the other furniture. Ianto would have been appalled by it all.

Jack ran his fingers over the bookshelf where the picture of Ianto and Lisa used to rest. The photo was currently back in his travelling bag, ready to be taken on the road in a moment’s notice. The bookshelf looked bare without it.

He blew at the dust, coughing as some flew back into his face. Ianto really would have hated the dust. He had always been more than a bit house-proud. He would have also been very cross that Jack was pulling books out of the bookshelf randomly, placing them in a box in no particular order.

Jack and Gwen worked silently, each of them taking their time to process boxing Ianto up and putting him away. It hurt Jack with each box he filled, but it was a necessary task. Ianto was really gone. The only thing Jack could have was the picture and the baby, and the baby was going far, far away as soon as it was physically possible. Jack wanted to do right by Ianto, and the best way he could do that now was to make sure his child lived longer than Ianto himself had.

Gwen worked in the kitchen, taking down all the pots and pans and organizing all the cutlery and plates. Jack took the sitting room and bedroom, putting away all the suits and the books and films. He had trouble with putting away one tie in particular; the red tie that always went with Ianto's “cute suit” was something Jack wasn’t ready to part with yet. It was actually the last thing Jack boxed up, and he only did so because Gwen was standing behind him, waiting for him to finish. Gwen would probably object to Jack pilfering a tie.

“It’s late,” Gwen said. “We’ve been working all afternoon.”

“Ianto would suggest pizza or curry by now,” Jack said.

“Ugh,” Gwen said. “Not in my tastes right now.”

“I’m feeling Thai.”

“Good enough for me. Rhys is coming to pick up the boxes soon.”

“He’d better,” Jack said.

“My feet and back are killing me.”

“Should’ve done this before we were seven months pregnant,” Jack said.

Gwen laughed. “If you’d have told me eight months ago that we’d end up pregnant at the same time, I would’ve shot you for being an imposter.”

Jack didn’t say anything, using the wall to help him sink down to sit on the floor of the nearly vacant bedroom.

“You’re still not keeping it, are you?”

“Why would I?” Jack asked. “Do you really want me to be responsible for the death of Ianto and his child?”

“It’s not your fault,” Gwen said.

He scoffed.

“It _isn’t_ ,” she repeated.

“He didn’t die in your arms, did he?”

“If he did, you’d still find a way to blame yourself.” She sighed when he didn’t respond. “Look, Rhys will be here in a minute. Let’s get you home and get you some Thai, alright?”

He glanced up at her, and her false smile faltered.

“You’re leaving again.”

“I came to finish things,” Jack told her. “Tie off loose ends.”

“And I’m one of those ends?” she asked.

“You’re better off without me.”

“Bollocks to that,” she said. “I think I can make that decision for myself, thanks.”

“Can you?” Jack asked.

She opened her mouth to reply, and it hung wide for a moment before she closed it again, shaking her head sadly to herself.

“Where will you go?” Gwen asked. “Space?”

Jack shook his head. For a while, he’d thought about it. The entirety of the Earth felt like a graveyard, not just Cardiff. But Ianto was a Welshman, through and through, and Jack can’t deny his child the right to his homeland.

“London,” Jack said. “I’m staying with Martha’s family for a while. When the baby’s born… there’s a family in Newport waiting for it. Then I’ll go back to space. Ought to be a transport coming by the solar system around then. If not…”

He shrugged.

“I can’t stay here, Gwen,” he concluded.

“You can’t just run away, either,” she said. “You can’t hide from everything. Yes, it sucks, and yes, it hurts, but that does not mean you get to run away forever. You have to face it.”

“You’re the one who told me I couldn’t keep going on the way I was.”

“Jack, that was not facing it. That was sitting in denial,” she said. “You needed to get up and… I dunno. Do something other than mope. But shoving your feelings away is not the way to go about it.”

“What else am I supposed to do, Gwen?”

“Accept it and move on,” Gwen said simply. Jack looked up to see tears forming in her eyes. “‘The end is where we start from,’ you said. Just _start_ , Jack. Stop denying, stop running, and just… start.”

“Like you have?”

“Yes.” The tears were falling freely down her face now. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t. Sometimes I think that I can’t go on. But I have to. For Rhys, for my baby… for you. For Owen and Tosh and Ianto.”

Jack observed her for a moment. If she thought he could keep on going, she was mistaken, and therefore still thought him to be the hero she convinced herself he was. He hadn’t given her enough time to detach herself from his life. If he hadn’t already been convinced he needed to go to London, to Francine, Tish, and Martha, this would have sent him sprinting their way.

The front door creaked open in the background, followed by a “hello?” from Rhys. Jack slowly and carefully got back onto his feet. He took a step forward and kissed Gwen’s head.

“The Rift is sealed,” he whispered into her hair. “You won’t have to worry about it. I hope you are happy, Gwen Cooper.”

He moved away as Rhys entered the room. He thanked Rhys for the help, and Rhys brushed it off with complaints that his wife really shouldn’t have done this in her condition (Jack courteously did not mention that he was also quite pregnant).

“Besides,” Rhys said. “Not done yet. Still gotta load this lot in the lorry. You can thank me later.”

“He’s leaving,” Gwen said sullenly.

“What?”

“Take care of her, Rhys,” Jack said.

“I… she’s my wife!” Rhys exclaimed. “Of course, I’ll take bloody care of her!”

Jack raised his eyebrows at Rhys, who shut his mouth quickly. Jack turned to Gwen, gave her a wink and a salute, and then left the apartment as fast as he could without making it seem like he was fleeing.

He took the train to London. He had always loved trains. Something about the timelessness of the train astounded and comforted him. Trains would be there long into the future, even amongst the stars. Sure, by then they were merely attractions and not real transport, but that didn’t change the familiarity and the fun they held for Jack. There was always something special about stepping off onto another station to see something important. Or some _one_. Jack had almost run out of someones. Thank god for Francine and Tish Jones.

* * *

Martha was very grateful that she no longer had to chase him around the globe just to get scans of him every two weeks. Jack was very grateful that Martha no longer complained about chasing him around the globe just to get scans of him every two weeks, and that Martha had finally stopped asking him if he’d like to know the baby’s sex. She seemed to have finally got it into her head that he wasn’t going to get attached to it.

He was also completely grateful for the Jones family (the _Martha_ Jones family, mind), who took very good care of him when Martha declared that he needed bedrest.

Francine, as always, was a little pushy about her care, and always made him work for his food. He spent a good long while slowly working at fixing her computer when she broke it. _Completely_ broke it, actually. He had a fun time putting it back together piece by piece, sending her out to get the parts he needed and puzzling it all out himself. Tosh would have done it twice as fast and twice as well, but he did his best and was a little proud of himself at the turnout, considering he knew very little of twenty-first century computer models.

Tish, on the other hand, was willing to do whatever for him whenever he needed. All he had to do was ask, and she would do it. He tried not to abuse his power, because god knows most people had. Jack constantly reminded her that he was _not_ her boss, and he was _not_ going to torture her if she didn’t do it. She always said she knew that, but she wanted to help. He tried not to think about the fact that she’d taken time off her job for this. At least he didn’t have to feel bad for making her move back in with her mother; she’d done that a little after the Dalek incident, both to soothe Francine’s nerves and her own.

Both of them had confronted him about the baby, though. Well, not _confronted_ , per se. More like offered themselves up. They both offered to raise it, Tish as her own and Francine as an adoptive grandchild. Jack, while immensely grateful to them both, had told them exactly what he had told Gwen. The baby deserved to grow up where Ianto’s heart lie, back in Wales. Tish immediately offered to move to Cardiff, but he still denied her. He was certain her sacrifice was mainly that: a sacrifice, no more, no less. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, both of them knew. She just didn’t want Jack’s kid to grow up with someone else. Jack told her that it wasn’t about him, anyway, and she gave him a long, sceptical look.

“You tell it stories,” Tish said one night as she sat on his bed. “But they’re never about _you_.”

Before he could object, she leaned in close to his very pregnant belly and began to tell the tale of how Jack had saved her from a beating from the Master. She smacked his head lightly every time he tried to cut her off or tell the baby that this was a highly fabricated tale.

“There,” she said when she had finished. “Now you know how great your dad is.”

Jack opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again at Tish’s dark look.

“You know, for all your talk about how great you are, you really don’t know your own worth, do you?” She shook her head. “Sometimes, I just wish you’d just… see.”

She got up from the bed and fled the room then, and he suspected she’d started crying, though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

He was in the bath when the baby dropped.

“Oh, that was not at all like what I remembered,” he said. “I don’t think I even felt it last time. Then again… different species.”

He patted a hand on his belly, then retracted it immediately. He shifted in the bathtub to grab a towel. He didn’t care about modesty, but he wasn’t about to expose the Jones women to something they didn’t need to see, not after they’d been so nice to him. He could use a little twenty-first century respect for two twenty-first century women.

“Hey, Francine?” he called.

Francine was there in an instant. He suspected she might have been lurking outside.

“Baby dropped,” he told her.

Her eyebrows raised. “Are you in labour?”

“Not… that I’m aware of?” he said, looking confusedly at her.

“All mine dropped right before I went to labour,” Francine said. “Should we call Martha?”

“I don’t know.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both of them watching the bulge of Jack’s stomach.

“Tish was an ugly baby,” Francine said abruptly.

“What?” Jack asked, startled and astounded.

“Ugliest baby I ever laid my eyes on, I thought,” Francine said. “Leo and Martha… both adorable little cherubs. Tish… not so much.”

Jack just stared at her.

“Then she grew up and I thought, oh. Not so ugly after all.” Francine looked him in the eye. “I look at baby pictures of her now and I can’t even fathom how I thought she was ugly. Then I realised, it wasn’t her. It was me.”

“I don’t see how—”

“I was so concerned with how I thought she should be and how _I_ should be, that I never paid attention to how cute she really was.” She folded her arms. “No baby is perfect, Jack. No parent is, either.”

Jack held her gaze for a moment, and was fortunately saved anything as Tish stepped in.

“What’s going on?” Tish asked.

Jack grinned. “Your mother thinks you were an ugly baby.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes going wide. “Mum!”

Francine sighed heavily and turned to comfort her daughter, sparing Jack of her disappointed stare. Jack was not able to meet her eyes for the rest of the day.

When Jack went into labour late one night almost five days later, Tish “lost her shit” (as she would later say) and Francine argued with Martha over the phone for an hour before mentioning that Jack was trying to give birth.

“What?” Francine asked when he gave her his best death glare. “It’s not like you’re ready to give birth yet. Contractions aren’t close enough together.”

“Either they pull this thing out of me,” he said through gritted teeth, “or it comes out all Alien-style. Not pleasant for me or baby.”

Francine rolled her eyes. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“I’m in labour!”

“You know, I’m very glad to know that in the future, men face the same pains we do,” she said calmly to Tish.

Tish looked rather like _she_ didn’t want to face the same pains women did.

Martha came very quickly after Francine’s call. She, too, berated her mother for making her wait. This was the first non-female pregnancy she’d had, she said, and she didn’t want something to go wrong. She wanted to survey the entire process, just in case. Jack raised no objections. Not until she brought in company.

“You said you weren’t going to tell UNIT,” he growled.

“I had no choice,” Martha told him. “I’m not an obstetrician. I can take care of you, but I don’t know how to take care of the baby.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just take it _out_.”

Then he clenched his jaw as another contraction came on.

After what felt like agonising ages, they finally decided it was time to take the baby out. Jack wasn’t sure about how Francine felt about a home birth when it was essentially a home _operation_ , but it was happening whether she liked it or not. Martha gave him drugs to numb the pain (because she wasn’t a psychopath like the Master, who had gutted him willingly just to hear him scream), then sliced him open and rooted around his organs to find his womb. This was very close to his nightmares, he determined.

* * *

The baby was born on July ninth, at eight nineteen in the morning. It screamed and screamed, and Jack nearly passed out from sheer relief. He felt his body knit together as Martha made a noise of excitement and adoration. He didn’t look up at her. He didn’t want to see it.

“Jack,” Martha said. He could practically hear her happy tears. “It’s a little boy!”

“Placenta gets reabsorbed,” Jack told her, closing his eyes tight. Ianto’s _son_. “You don’t have to go looking for it.”

“Is that… possible?”

Jack shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Martha must have agreed, because she didn’t say anything else. The baby continued to shriek, and Jack heard Martha snip off the umbilical cord.

“Jack.”

He snapped his eyes open, looking up at the ceiling.

“Do you want to see him?”

Jack opened his mouth to say something, only to find he didn’t have anything to say. He took a deep breath instead, then closed his mouth.

“If you don’t… they’re going to have to take him now,” she told him. “Feed him and clean him up.”

He nodded, not taking his eyes off the ceiling.

“You won’t get to see him again.”

“I know,” Jack whispered.

That was for the best, wasn’t it? Protect the boy by keeping him as far away as possible. He would have a better, happier, _safer_ life that way.

“Okay,” she said.

Her tone made his heart ache in ways he couldn’t explain, and the baby just continued to scream. Jack took in another deep breath as Martha’s footsteps made their way to the door to hand over the boy to the nurses Martha had brought along for that very reason. They were going to take the baby. This was the last moment he had with the being that had stuck with him for over forty-three months. Last moment with the last thing Ianto had left him. Jack screwed his eyes shut again.

“Wait.”

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the baby’s cries.

“Give him to me,” Jack said.

He managed to open his eyes and look at Martha. She looked at him for a moment, then nodded, walking back to him with the baby in her arms. Jack reached out for the boy and she placed him in Jack’s arms. The baby wailed as Jack pulled him in to his hold.

Jack didn’t know what Francine had been talking about; this was the most beautiful baby he had ever laid his eyes on. Barely minutes old and Jack could already see Ianto in him. The cute little nose, the tuft of black hair…

He only became aware that he was crying when Martha’s hand brushed his cheek gently.

“You have a right to keep him, if you want,” Martha told him.

He bent his head down and pressed his lips lightly onto the baby’s forehead. Oh… now that he was here, in Jack’s arms… Jack definitely wanted. He wanted this baby more than _anything_. But…

“You’re allowed to want him,” Martha said, as if she read his mind. “He’s your _son_.”

Jack glanced up at her, then down at the baby when the earnest look in her eyes was too much to bear.

She was right, wasn’t she? They’d all been telling him that, right from the start. Gwen urging him to move on without running away, Archie rebuking him for giving up, Tish and Gwen both reminding him he was allowed to be happy, Francine explaining to him about the initial fear of parenthood, Martha silently judging his stupid attempts to distance himself… and Ianto… Ianto thought his life was so important that he’d sacrificed his _twice_. Was it really for the best to give up Ianto’s son because Jack was both too scared to go on without him and too scared to keep holding onto him?

Would it even keep the boy safe?

Jack closed his eyes again and promised himself this. If he could honestly answer “yes” to both those questions, he’d let go right now, and hand the baby back to Martha. Two seconds into his consideration, he found that he probably couldn’t take his hands off the boy, even if the answer _was_ “yes.” After all… this was _his_ son, too. And that was all that mattered in the end.

“I want him,” Jack sobbed (later, he’d be a little embarrassed about that). “I want him.”

“Okay,” Martha whispered.

And for a perfect moment, Martha wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek on his head as he held his son close to him, weeping quietly because he loved and missed Ianto so much, and because he loved and cherished their son just as much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swore I would never write an mpreg. The only reason I did was because it's canonically possible. If it wasn't, I wouldn't. And if I had the patience to edit, I would. I don't have patience, though. So here's this! Are we excited yet?  
> (No, I'm not done with Ianto. Who do you think I am? RTD? No!)  
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Have a lovely day!


	2. Bridge

It was a miserably cold day, that was for sure. Jack was actually wearing _gloves_. Jack never used to wear gloves. Not for safety, not to keep from contaminating evidence, and certainly not for _warmth_. And the only time he’d ever worn a _hat_ was when he was serving in the military. Still, examples must be set for certain young boys who think that the world was a “do as I do, not as I say” sort of world, when it was, in fact, the exact opposite. Especially when one’s father was Captain Jack Harkness.

So, Jack was wearing a hat and gloves and feeling a bit like an ordinary person, which was to say that he felt very, very stupid. Gwen said that this was a good thing, that it deflated his ego. It also deflated his hair, he told her, and she had laughed.

“It’s okay to be ordinary,” she had said. “People do it all the time.”

“ _I_ am not _people_ ,” he reminded her. “ _I_ am Captain Jack Harkness.”

“ _You_ are Ioan Jones’s father,” she said. “And as far as Ioan Jones’s father is concerned, ordinary is expected.”

He didn’t see much point arguing it any further.

At the very least, he wasn’t as cold as he usually was. Of course, he hardly got cold in the first place, thanks to his fifty-first century inner plumbing, but it was nice to feel toasty warm. It was a bit like the planet the Time Agency had been based on, now that he thought about it. Maybe gloves weren’t too bad. (He refused to change his standpoint on hats.)

The wind whipped around his face as they walked down the pavement. Jack had long since learned that long strides were a thing of the past, and that his usual pace had to be cut in half to accommodate for tiny legs that were hesitant to step on cracks in the pavement. At first, that had been cute, watching Ioan jump over the ones he nearly stepped on, but now it just meant they were going to be late to swim class. Jack had half a mind to just pick him up and carry him the rest of the way at this point. 

“Come on, kiddo, we’re going to be late,” Jack told him.

Ioan looked up at him, eyes wide and adorable and… ah, damn. It would be so much easier to be stern and serious if that face weren’t so cute.

“Do you want to miss swimming?” Jack asked, just barely managing to hold back his smile.

Ioan shook his head fervently. That kid really loved his swimming, bless his little heart. Jack had tried to get him into football (not rugby yet, god, he was too tiny for that), but Ioan was determined to keep swimming. Jack was slightly proud of him for that. Jack had been the champion of the breastfly of his age group in the Boeshane Peninsula. Ioan would never go on to accomplish that, mainly because none of the brainless idiots in the twenty-first century seemed to comprehend the combo-strokes, but he tried his hardest, and that was what counted. Besides, Ioan had Ianto’s looks, quiet and sneaky abilities, and incredible intelligence, so was it really so bad if the one thing he got from Jack was an appreciation for a _worthwhile_ sport?

Gwen had socked him for saying that, once. Not his fault that the best sport had rules that made sense.

At any rate, Ioan actually had one or two friends that he made in his swim class, and that was an achievement. Jack was not about to tempt fate by switching him over to football. And he was certainly not going to let Ioan get kicked out of class for being late. Again.

Jack sighed. “Let’s pick up the pace a little, alright?”

Ioan nodded, and they walked marginally faster than before. Jack held tighter onto Ioan’s hand as they went through a small crowd, then looked down to make sure Ioan was still with him when they got through to the other side. Yep. Still there.

“Can we get ice cream later?” Ioan asked.

“Ice cream?” Jack asked. “It’s cold out!”

“Makes it taste better. Doesn't melt that way.”

Jack laughed. “Can’t argue with that logic, now, can I?”

He felt the familiar tug on his arm as Ioan jumped as hard and high as he could over “The Big Crack.” Not long until they were at the pool, then. They just might make it in time.

Jack should honestly think twice before deciding things like that. He only tempted fate.

For the first time in over six years, his vortex manipulator emitted a loud beep.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. Someone walking behind them bumped into him, but he was so firmly rooted in place that they just bounced off, grumbling to themselves about fools in the way as they kept passing by.

Ioan tugged at his hand. “Daddy?”

“One moment, kid,” Jack told him.

“We’re gonna be laaate!”

Jack bit back a snarky comment about whose fault that was. It was not helpful or kind. Instead, he bit the fingertip of his right glove, pulling it off with his teeth. He pocketed the glove, then pushed up his sleeve to glance down at his vortex manipulator.

It beeped again.

“Oh, no,” he muttered to himself.

After he’d repaired it a few years back, he had never bothered to take off the Rift alert setting. He left it on as a precaution, just in case some idiot (the Doctor) decided to fuck with the Rift. Or, in this instance, if it suddenly started projecting a reading that was bound to end in what Toshiko used to call a “Rift Gift.”

Another beep sent a rush of dread through him.

“Daddy?”

Jack looked down at Ioan and his wide eyes.

“Sorry. My vort—um, the strap on my wrist is beeping," Jack told him, forcing a smile on his face. "It never does that, huh?” 

Ioan shook his head.

“You know what it means?” Jack asked.

Another shake of the head. “No.”

“It means we have to miss a bit of swimming.” Please, _please_ let Miss Pritchard understand…

“Why?”

“Uh… the sky is being weird, and I have to fix it really quick.”

Ioan blinked up at him. “Okay.”

Thank god for gullible children who accepted any crazy thing their father said without question. They were really going to have to work on that later, though. Not now. Now, he was trying to pinpoint the exact location of the soon-to-be Rift Gift. Imagine his shock and surprise to find that it was just a little way back the way they had come.

“Okay, kiddo,” he said to Ioan. “Hold on to your hat. We’re going to take a short run.”

Then he swept Ioan up into an arm and dashed back so they could make it there on time.

“Woaaaaah,” Ioan giggled in his ear. At least someone thought this situation was fun.

Jack stumbled to a halt a few cracks of pavement away from the predicted spot. For a moment he reflected on how odd it was that his life was now measured in pavement cracks. He shook himself. Not the time for that. He glanced down at his wrist again, which was now beeping at an alarming rate and pitch. Any moment now.

Jack set Ioan down and grabbed onto Ioan’s hand tightly. Maybe he should have taken Ioan somewhere else, somewhere safe. Maybe he should have just kept going to swim class and called UNIT to let them handle it. Maybe he should have…

His vortex manipulator let out a long and final beep. Too late to change his decision now.

A flash caught the corner of his eye and he whirled around. Ioan protested as Jack accidentally yanked his arm too hard, but Jack wasn’t paying him any attention. The person that blinked into existence in front of him was a far more pressing matter.

The man didn’t notice Jack staring at him at first; he seemed to be too wrapped up in looking down at his own body in confusion. Then he looked up, his eyes locking onto Jack’s own.

The breath caught in Jack’s throat.

“Oh,” said Ianto Jones with a small, startled laugh. “I’m alive!”

And then his eyes rolled back into his head as his legs collapsed beneath him.

“Yeah,” Jack said, his voice feeling a million miles away from him. “We're not going to swimming lessons today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you I wasn't done with Ianto.  
> Thanks for sticking with it! Have a wonderful day!


	3. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How many times can I mix up the names Ioan and Ianto? A lot! Don't worry, I fixed all the mistakes. (Hopefully...)

The very first thing Ianto Jones was aware of was his sofa. Which was nice, because he’d always liked his sofa. Jack had always complained that it was worn out and all that shit, but Ianto could always get him to shut up by reminding him exactly _how_ it got worn out. Then Jack would suggest ways to wear it out more, and they’d wind up on the sofa, sticky, sated, and content.

At first, Ianto thought that was what happened, but he dimly became aware of the fact that there was no stickiness and no other warm body on the sofa with him. And there was a blanket on him and a pillow behind his head. Jack never went to these lengths when they… well, when they fucked.

There was someone talking in the background. Jack, Ianto assumed. Probably on the phone, based on the lack of response. Was it Gwen? Was there a Rift alert? If it was another bloody Weevil in bloody Bute Park, he refused to get up.

He opened his eyes and was very nearly startled into coherency. That was not his ceiling. He turned his head and gazed around him at the wrong layout of the room and the wrong colour of the walls. This was not his flat.

And, oddly enough, he was in two places at once. He was here, on the sofa, but he was also over there, on one of his chairs, (which was in the wrong place), looking decidedly a lot younger, swinging his feet back and forth and focusing on something in the distance.

Ianto closed his eyes again. Maybe if he just fell back asleep, everything would right itself, and he would wake up back in his flat with Jack laying haphazardly beside him as they tried not to fall off the sofa.

The second time Ianto awoke, he was still not in his flat. A feeling of dread sunk into his chest. Bloody Torchwood. Wherever he was and whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

Then he remembered the House of the Dead.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispered, barely loud enough for even himself to hear.

Was he dead, then? No, no, he couldn’t be. Suzie and Owen had said there was nothing. _Jack_ said there was nothing. And this was definitely not nothing. He still had a heartbeat, anyway; he could feel it racing in his chest. So, not dead.

He blinked the rest of the sleep out of his eyes and looked around. He had no idea where he was. It was a flat or a house of some kind. With _his_ furniture. What the hell was that about?

Then he spotted himself again.

Granted, now that he was awake and coherent, he could recognize that it wasn’t actually _him_ , because that was impossible, but rather someone who shared his face. It had been a long time since Ianto had seen that face, though. Nearly twenty years. But even after all that time, he still knew that definitely was his face, no doubt about it.

Oh, god, had Jack _cloned_ him?

Ianto shook his head. No need to jump to conclusions. Torchwood One taught him to observe and rationalise first, then make hypotheses based on those observations. Torchwood _Three_ had taught him to panic and then find Jack, but, for now, he decided One logic was better off than screaming.

The boy had to be anywhere from six to seven years old. He was biting his lower lip (which looked kind of silly, considering the two missing front teeth) and tapping away on some weird… electronic plaque thing. Like a big PDA that was compromised of only screen. Was it an alien artefact? Ianto brushed it aside for the moment.

With closer examination and a little less panic, Ianto could determine that the boy was _not_ his clone. The differences were subtle, but they were there. Curly hair that was just a tad too curly to be his. The colour and texture seemed right, but the curls belonged to someone else. The eyes were blue, but more of concerningly familiar steely blue than his own cold, icy ones. And those teeth… even without the giant gap and without being shown as a smile, Ianto would know those perfect teeth anywhere.

“Oh, Christ,” Ianto said.

The boy’s eyes snapped up to him, and by god, those really were Jack’s eyes. The two of them stared at each other for a moment, the boy’s eyes widening with terror. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before the boy jumped down from the chair and ran off. Ianto blinked at the vacated spot and abandoned electronic device.

Deciding it was time to get to the bottom of this, Ianto threw the blanket off and got up. He noted again that, while this was not his flat, it definitely was his furniture. That was quite disconcerting, to say the least.

He followed the path the kid had taken out of the sitting room. There was a dining room and kitchen beyond a small threshold leading from the sitting room, and Ianto prepared to peek around in there. The scene unfolding in there stopped him dead in his tracks before he’d even crossed the threshold.

Jack was sitting on a chair at the dining table, both of which were also Ianto’s. The chair was angled away from the table, pointed in the direction of the sitting room, but Jack’s head was turned over his shoulder to read a newspaper that was spread out on the table. Odd, because Jack had never been a newspaper-reading person. It was also quite odd that the boy was sitting on his lap. Jack had a hand gently rubbing his back and a hand in the boy’s hair, clutching him lightly to his chest while the boy clung tightly onto him.

The boy caught Ianto staring again, but this time he didn’t run away. Instead, he turned his head, burying it in Jack’s chest, his fingers curling tighter into Jack’s shirt. Jack, not taking his eyes off the newspaper, craned his neck down to plant a kiss in the boy’s hair.

Really, though, since when did Jack read the newspaper? And since when did he have a _child?_

This was getting to be too much to bear.

“Um,” Ianto said. “Jack?”

Jack didn’t look up at him right away. His head turned back to face Ianto, but it took a little longer for him to visibly tear his eyes away from the newspaper. Then Jack looked up at him and… _smiled_.

Ianto almost took a step back. It was very, _very_ rare to get a truly genuine smile from Jack. Yet here he was, on the receiving end of one of those smiles, though he’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Jack said, grinning his fucking face off.

“What’s going on?” Ianto asked. “Where am I?”

“‘ _When_ am I’ is a better question,” Jack offered.

Ianto blinked. Time travel… would make sense. “Right, okay, when am I?”

“Do you remember the House of the Dead?”

“Yes,” Ianto said. As far as he was concerned, it had been yesterday, though it evidently wasn’t.

“What about the Thames House?”

“I…”

He could remember. Really. He could also remember _not_ remembering, back in the House of the Dead, but maybe he just hadn’t _wanted_ to remember. But that didn’t change the fact that… well, he had _died_ in the Thames House.

“Yeah,” Ianto finished pathetically.

“It’s been seven years since we went into Thames House,” Jack said.

“Oh,” Ianto said, because there was nothing else to say.

Seven years. Six and a half years since the House of the Dead. That was a long time. For Ianto, at least. Lots of things could have changed. Fashion, food, technology… Jack had a house with Ianto’s furniture… Jack had a kid that looked like Ianto.

Ianto stiffened. Six or seven years, he had determined the boy to be. Seven years since Thames House. Ianto’s eyes trailed down to the child, who was still clinging onto Jack like a baby koala.

“Jack,” Ianto said slowly, “who is that?”

Jack’s smile changed to one Ianto had never seen before in his life. Ianto had no idea what to make of the look Jack was giving the boy on his lap.

“Hey,” Jack said to the boy. “Can you get up, please?”

The boy seemed to fasten himself tighter to Jack, if that was somehow possible, and he shook his head vehemently into Jack’s chest. Ianto caught a flash of blue behind the kid’s ears that he hadn’t seen before. Either that was a Bluetooth and Jack was recruiting to Torchwood at a very young age, or…

“Kiddo, you have to let go,” Jack told the child.

The boy shook his head again. Definitely hearing aids, Ianto concluded. Ianto watched as Jack reached behind himself, prising the fingers from his shirt. The boy struggled a little as Jack heaved him up from his lap and set him down on the floor, immediately dashing behind Jack’s chair the moment his feet were on the ground. His head poked out from behind Jack momentarily, blinking at Ianto for a second, before disappearing from view again. Jack rolled his eyes to himself and stood up, then picked up the child again and holding him for Ianto to see.

“Ianto,” Jack said amicably, “meet your son, Ioan Jones.”

Well, it wasn’t as if Ianto hadn’t already gathered as much on his own, but _surmising_ it and _knowing_ it were two very different things.

“My… son,” Ianto said, rather stupidly.

“Your son,” Jack repeated. “Ioan. Ioan, can you say hi?”

The boy, Ioan, hid his face in Jack’s shoulder.

“He’s a bit shy,” Jack said cheerfully. “He’ll warm up to you. Won’t you, kid?”

Ioan shook his head and Jack rolled his eyes again.

“ _He will_ ,” mouthed Jack.

“Sorry, but… how did this happen?” Ianto asked. He felt like his head was full of water and he was rapidly sinking below it.

“I’ll give you one good guess.”

“That’s not…” Ianto glared at Jack. “You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

“I know,” Jack said.

Then he set Ioan down on the ground.

“Go play,” Jack told him. “Grown-up time.”

Ioan ran out of the room as soon as Jack let him go. Ianto watched him go, confused and slightly terrified.

“How the hell,” Ianto began quietly, “do we have a son?”

“You know how I always joked about not wanting to get pregnant again?”

Ianto glanced over at him.

“I wasn’t exactly joking,” Jack said. “Fifty-first century. It’s a lot different from now.”

“I see,” Ianto muttered. Then he frowned. “The House of the Dead…how far along were you?”

“You noticed?”

Ianto raised his eyebrows. Jack might have thought he was clever with the way he hid behind his coat, but Ianto knew both Jack and that coat too well to notice. At the time, he hadn’t really paid it much attention, but now it was fairly obvious that Jack had gained a fair amount of weight.

“Second trimester,” Jack said. “He was born on July ninth. Almost six and a half now.”

“Oh,” Ianto said. “Okay.”

He wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Are you alright?”

Ianto stared at him.

“Am I alright?” Ianto asked. “I’ve just been sent forward seven years, my furniture is in a house I’ve never seen before, I have a child, apparently, and I… oh, god…”

Jack grabbed him as his legs sagged under him, steering him into the vacated chair. Ianto slumped into it and stared at the floor.

“I _died_ ,” he breathed. “ _Twice_.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. He pulled out another chair and turned it to face Ianto. He sat down in it, placing his hands on Ianto’s shoulders. “You did.”

Ianto put his face in his hands.

“Just breathe,” Jack told him.

Obeying, Ianto took in deep breaths, exhaling slower and slower each time, until Jack patted his back gently. He sat up, Jack’s hands falling off his shoulders and onto his lap.

“When it hits, it hits pretty hard, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ianto agreed. “Did Owen panic like this?”

“Owen went into a depressive episode.”

“Oh. Right.” Broken finger and sliced hand. Ianto hoped to stay away from body mutilation, because as far as he could tell, he could still feel pain. “What happened to me, then?”

“Rift sucked you up and spat you out,” Jack said.

“But why didn’t I blow up?” Ianto asked. “I mean, I was prepared to.”

“I know.” Jack gave him a wry look, and Ianto was vividly reminded that he had tricked Jack into believing he’d walk out with him. Whoops.

Jack sat back in his chair. “I don’t know everything, but from what I can tell, you absorbed just enough Rift energy to… keep yourself together.”

“How did I get out? You said the Rift would be sealed. For good.”

Jack shook his head. “That much I don’t know. UNIT’s done some readings of the area. The Rift hasn’t opened again.”

“So, I just let myself out?”

“If you like,” Jack said with a shrug.

“Wait. UNIT?”

“Officially took over Torchwood in October of 2009,” Jack said. “I’ve been a bit too busy for Rift babysitting duty.”

Ianto supposed that made sense. Letting Torchwood fall to UNIT was better than allowing the government to get its grubby hands all over it. Ianto doubted he’d ever be able to trust them again. Fucking bastards.

“How are you feeling?” Jack asked.

“Tired,” Ianto said.

“Still?” Jack asked, incredulous. “You’ve been out for seven hours.”

“Really?” It didn’t feel like that. It felt like he got two hours of sleep last night, then went ten rounds with a Weevil. “I could use another eight.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jack said, frowning. “It’s just… The first time I came back, I had so much energy.”

Not just the first time. Ianto recalled a lot of post-death fucks. Well, post-post-death; Ianto was never about to have his way with Jack (or vice versa) until Jack had washed the gore out of his hair first.

“Shower,” Ianto said.

“What?”

“I need a shower,” Ianto said. “I haven’t showered in seven years.”

“You know, that’s not how it wor—”

“I know that,” Ianto said, returning his face to his hands.

Between coming back to life (twice), jumping seven years out of time, and suddenly becoming a parent, he could use one _normal_ thing in his life. Showers were normal. Showers couldn’t change in seven years. Could they?

Jack nodded, then helped him to his feet and led him to the bathroom. Showers thankfully had _not_ changed, Ianto discovered as Jack went to grab him a spare change of clothes and a towel. When Jack returned with both, Ianto suggested they try out the shower together, just in case... Jack laughed. And then _declined_.

Ianto stood there blinking at the door as it closed behind Jack. Since when did Jack not jump at the chance for a quick shag?

Shaking his head, he set the clothes and towel down, undressed, and turned on the shower. He stepped in and, standing under the spray, he lost himself in an oblivion of warmth and comfort, marvelling at the one constant in his life.

* * *

By the time Ianto had finished his shower, Jack had apparently already ordered pizza.

“We eat pizza on special occasions,” Jack explained. “I think this calls for a special occasion. He’ll be excited.”

Ianto looked over his shoulder at Ioan, who was setting out plates. He set one plate far away and the other two close together, and then moved the chairs accordingly. Ianto took it that the isolated plate was his.

“Sorry,” Jack whispered to Ianto. “You scare him a little.”

“ _I_ scare _him_?” Ianto hissed back. “ _He_ didn’t suddenly become a parent in less than two hours. I know I’ve been dead his whole life, but surely you told him about me. I mean, I hope you told him about me.”

Jack frowned at him. “Of course I told him about you! Why would you think I wouldn’t?”

The doorbell rang before Ianto had to come up with a reasonable answer to the question. Jack sent him another odd look before brushing by to collect the pizza. That left Ioan and Ianto alone in the same room.

“Hi,” Ianto said.

Ioan hid behind a chair. Ianto supposed he couldn’t blame him. Six and a half years of nothing but Jack’s _stories_ (Ianto began to realise that was less of a good thing than it had originally sounded) and suddenly he appeared out of nowhere. What was he to say to the kid? “Hello, I’m your dead dad?” If there was an instruction manual on this, he would very much like to borrow it.

The sight of the pizza, however, pulled Ioan out from behind the chair because, true to Jack’s word, Ioan was very ecstatic about it.

“Pizza!” he exclaimed. “What kind?”

Ianto realised with interest that this was the first time he’d heard Ioan say anything. He analysed the voice to himself, trying to recall his own voice that age. Had he sounded like that? He couldn’t remember. Had Jack sounded like that? He would never know. Ianto thought it was a little bit of both, though, because the kid’s Welsh vowels sort of meshed with Jack’s flat “American” ones. Ianto supposed that happened when two accents clashed together. Nature versus nurture. Or nature _and_ nurture, in this case.

“What kind do you think?” Jack asked Ioan.

“Cheese?” guessed Ioan excitedly.

Jack threw Ianto an apologetic look. “We’ve turned into a cheese-pizza-only household. Sorry.”

“Fine by me,” Ianto said.

Cheese wasn’t his favourite (the last time he’d had it was when they were all on a vegetarian streak after the space whale incident, because there was only so much veggie pizza a man could take), but he wasn’t about to force Ioan to eat Jubilee’s Meat Feast if he ever wanted to get the kid to like him.

Dinner, or whatever this was, was quiet. Ianto, to some amusement, watched Ioan eat pizza awkwardly without the use of two missing teeth. Ioan watched him back with scepticism and concern. Jack seemed to be content just to be eating, which was a given with Jack. It was entirely possible he did not notice the frigid atmosphere between the two almost-strangers.

Ianto automatically cleared the table when they were finished. Ioan and Jack gave him odd looks, but he didn’t care. Three plates and three glasses were hardly much of a chore to wash, nor did they take much time.

If Ianto popped his arse out a little whilst leaning over to wash the plates, who was to blame him? It was unnerving to go this long without even the tiniest hint of a come-on from Jack. What was more discomfiting was the fact that Jack didn’t make one single comment even _now_. He didn’t even brush up against Ianto’s arse when he came up next to him! Fucking unsettling, that was what this was.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Jack said as Ianto dried the last glass.

Ianto shrugged.

“Daddy?” Ioan asked.

As Jack turned to his son, Ianto frowned. Daddy made sense for Jack. What was Ianto? Dad? Dead-Father? Just plain Ianto?

“What’s up, kiddo?”

“Can I watch James Bond?”

Ianto nearly dropped the glass in his hand. He threw Jack an astounded look.

“You let him watch James Bond?” Ianto asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“He’s _six_ ,” Ianto said.

“And?”

Ianto gaped at him. “He’s too young!”

Jack folded his arms. “How old were you when you first started watching James Bond films?”

“Eleven, at least,” Ianto said.

Jack rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to watch _Skyfall_.”

“Watch what?”

“Exactly,” Jack said, and Ianto suddenly realised there were probably a lot of new things he didn’t know about.

“I don’t wanna watch that,” Ioan said.

“What do you want to watch, then?” Jack asked him.

So, that was how they wound up watching _The Spy Who Loved Me_.

Ianto was still concerned about the appropriateness of the film for young viewers, but neither Jack nor Ioan seemed to mind. The good news was, there _were_ parts Jack did not let Ioan see. The bad news was, Jack told him he’d be allowed to see them “when he’s older,” and there was no telling how long from now “older” was. Could be next week, for all Ianto knew. Ianto figured he shouldn’t be too surprised; it was Jack and Jack’s son, after all, and “appropriate” probably wasn’t much of a factor. Then again, Ianto supposed he would probably also have had his kid prattling off the best James Bond quotes as soon as the child could talk, so perhaps he shouldn’t judge.

Ianto found himself yawning three quarters of the way through the film. He glanced over to Jack and Ioan, who were curled up on the sofa together. How long before Ioan went to bed so that Ianto could have some moments with Jack alone? He checked the time. Reasonable hour to send a kid to bed.

He stuck it out through the rest of the film, and even managed to wait patiently as Jack sent Ioan off to get ready for bed. Then Jack wandered off after Ioan and didn’t come back, so Ianto got up to see what the fuss was about.

Jack was sitting on the floor in the room that apparently belonged to Ioan, telling him a story. Ianto listened to it for a moment before realising that he _knew_ that story.

“You’re telling him about John Ellis and Diane Holmes?” Ianto asked before he could stop himself.

Jack looked over his shoulder at him.

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“Is that…” Ianto cut off. If Jack thought it was a good idea to let Ioan watch James Bond, then he probably also thought it was a good idea to talk about _Torchwood_. He redirected. “That’s not how the story goes.”

Something in Jack’s demeanour changed. It was very minute, but Ianto had known Jack long enough and well enough to note the shift.

“Okay, then,” Jack said. He turned back to Ioan. “Is it okay if _he_ tells you a story tonight?”

Ianto started. That was _not_ what he was aiming for. Thankfully, Ioan shook his head quickly, though the fearful glance shot at Ianto was uncalled for and unappreciated.

“Then John Ellis it is,” Jack said, and then finished his completely inaccurate tale on how _Ianto_ saved the day by driving the car away from the gas.

Oh.

With a jolt, Ianto realised exactly what Jack was doing. It stunned him. He never thought he’d make it into Jack’s _story_ stories. Maybe just as a casual name drop, or even an “I once had a boyfriend who made halfway decent coffee” kind of thing.

Ianto cornered Jack outside Ioan’s room when he finished saying goodnight.

“You told him… are your stories always this fabricated?” Ianto asked, unsure what to say.

Jack smiled. Oh, this smile Ianto knew. This was his Sad Smile. Ianto was well-versed in Sad Smiles. Jack raised a hand and brushed it down Ianto’s cheek, leading Ianto to believe maybe, just maybe, they might finally… well, _do it_. Unfortunately, Ianto was far too tired to do anything, and Jack didn’t seem inclined to go any further than stroking his cheek gently.

Jack found a spare kid’s toothbrush to fork over to Ianto. Ianto tried not to be mortified as he brushed his teeth with a tiny blue toothbrush that barely fit in his hand. Jack was wise enough not to laugh.

Ianto slipped into spare pyjamas and wondered when the hell Jack bothered to start wearing pyjamas. Jack didn’t seem to be the person who would care much if his child saw him in the nude. Yet, Jack pulled on his own flannel trousers and threw on a plain white t-shirt and acted as if this were completely normal for him. Ianto supposed it might be.

There was a moment where Ianto expected to be booted back to the sitting room and his old sofa. For all he knew, Jack could have had another lover. Or had gotten used to sleeping alone. It was entirely possible that Ianto was not wanted.

“So,” Ianto said, looking between the large bed and the door. “I’ll… um… see you in the morning, I suppose.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack said.

Ianto nearly sighed in relief and headed over to his side of the bed, and was then shocked when Jack told him to go to the other side. Ianto didn’t comment on it. Maybe Jack had forgotten what side of the bed Ianto always slept on.

Or maybe it was because Jack had given _his son_ his side of the bed, instead.

Ianto tried not to feel bitter about it as Ioan slid into bed beside Jack and Jack’s arms wrapped around Ioan instead of Ianto. He understood it; on Boeshane, families all slept in one bed, so it was no wonder that Jack and his child shared a bed, and it was completely normal for them to cuddle up, because they had been doing so for years. But it still made Ianto feel a little… left out, especially when Jack sort of shimmied away from Ianto’s touch when he tried to curl by to him from behind. That really hurt, to be honest.

He turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep as he listened to Jack and Jack’s son loudly snore the night away.

* * *

Ianto woke up suddenly, realising that he had slept past his alarm, and that he was now going to be late to feeding the Weevils. And then, just as suddenly, he remembered where and when he was, and that any Weevils in the cells would be long dead by now, considering the fact that they’d have gone up with the Hub.

He sat up, finding that he’d shifted to the very edge of his new side of the bed, and was also very alone. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Stretching, he stood up. Oh, that felt nice. All that tiredness that he’d had yesterday vanished with a decent night’s rest, it seemed. Now he felt… revitalised. Rejuvenated. Ready to do anything. Or anyone.

Speaking of, where was Jack?

Ianto got up and looked around, finding him in the bathroom. He was standing in front of the sink, bleary eyed in the bright lights as he squinted down at whatever small object he was fiddling with in his hands. Ioan was on the other side of him, wriggling his body in some sort of childish dance as he stared up intently at his father, waiting for him to finish what he was doing. Then Ioan caught sight of Ianto and froze, his eyes wide in fear. After a moment of staring at each other, Ioan seemed to suddenly unfreeze, and he grabbed onto Jack’s trousers. Jack didn’t seem to notice, or possibly care, that Ioan was now hiding behind his legs. He just went on doing whatever it was he was doing, only stopping to hand something down to Ioan. Ioan eyed Ianto in fear once more, then evidently decided he could take his eyes off of Ianto for a brief second as he stuffed something into his ear… oh, that was a hearing aid. Made sense. Also, those things looked absolutely tiny in Jack’s gigantic man-hands. Then Ianto was thinking more about those man-hands and just what they could do, and _wow_ , was he horny this morning.

“Good morning,” Ianto said, mainly to distract himself from the growing number of salacious thoughts about Jack’s hands.

Jack glanced up momentarily from tinkering with Ioan’s other hearing aid.

“Morning,” he said, returning his attention almost immediately back to the hearing aid.

Okay. Ianto would admit that was odd, but he knew Jack could be a little cranky when tired, so he let it slide.

“Here you go,” Jack told Ioan as he handed the other hearing aid down. He folded his arms and waited as Ioan slipped it on. “Good?”

Ioan nodded.

“Okay. Brush your teeth. You’ve got—” Jack checked his wrist strap “—twenty minutes to eat breakfast. What do you want?”

“Pizza.”

“No,” Jack sighed. It sounded like this was a familiar argument. “ _Breakfast_ foods.”

“Toast?”

“Yep. Jam?”

“Yes!”

“Okay.”

Jack kissed the top of Ioan’s head as Ioan squeezed some toothpaste onto his tiny toothbrush. Ianto stepped out of the way as Jack went to go through the door. Jack stopped short and blinked at him.

“Oh,” Jack said.

Ianto didn’t ask if Jack had forgotten he was there. That would be awkward and a little unpleasant. So he let it slide. It wasn’t every day Jack woke up to see him, so it wasn’t like Ianto could blame him for forgetting. Even if it kind of hurt.

“Um,” Jack said. “Breakfast?”

“Anything’s fine,” Ianto said.

“Toast good?”

“Absolutely.”

Jack smiled at him, then moved past, presumably to go make that toast. Ianto watched him go for a second, then realised he was left alone with the child.

He slowly turned back to Ioan, who was brushing his teeth slowly and eyeing him cautiously through his reflection in the mirror.

“Hi,” Ianto said.

Bad idea, judging by the way the alarm washed over Ioan’s face.

“I’ll just… go,” Ianto said, then quickly fled the room.

Breakfast was dead silent, save for the few times Jack tried to start a conversation. He gave up when he noticed his audience was more than a bit apprehensive of one another.

Jack packed Ioan and Ianto into his car (which looked very… _normal_ , for Jack’s standards), and drove Ioan off to school. Ianto then became aware that it was a Monday. Right. The future had calendar dates. Obviously. But he did store the fact that he’d come back on a Sunday for later contemplation. It probably meant nothing, but at this point, Ianto was over-analysing anything and everything.

Everything except Jack, of course. He was pointedly avoiding analysing Jack, because he was sort of afraid of what he might learn if he did.

“Okay, kiddo,” Jack said pulled the car up in front of the school. “Kiss.”

Ioan obediently unbuckled and poked his head up front so Jack could kiss it.

“Have a good day,” Jack said as Ioan opened the car door and hopped out. “Love you!”

“Love you!” Ioan repeated in that tiny little voice of his.

Ianto watched the door swing shut, just barely hard enough to close completely. He turned to Jack.

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully.

“What?” Jack asked.

“Nothing,” Ianto said, shrugging. “Just never thought I’d see the day where Captain Jack Harkness turned domestic.”

Jack’s face contorted and hardened into something akin to a frown or a glare, but not quite either.

“Well,” he said tensely, turning back to face the front as he started the car again, “you did. Happy?”

Ianto eyed him, at a loss for how to reply. What the hell was _that_ for?

“I guess,” Ianto said eventually.

And he turned back forward, too, confused and a little shocked. They were silent for the rest of the drive.

Jack took him to a storage facility. _The_ storage facility, the one that held all of Torchwood’s deceased’s possessions. Ianto watched him enter the code (Ianto’s own birthday) and then gawked at the near-empty room on the other side of the door. He supposed most of his things were currently in use at Jack’s house, but did he really have so few belongings? They packed the couple of boxes of Ianto’s clothes into the boot of Jack’s car, which left only a few boxes of trinkets and books behind. Yeah, that was definitely terrifying to think about. All Ianto’s life had been, packed up and hardly taking any space in a small storage room. Had he really had such little impact on the world?

Ianto kept silent again as they drove back to the house. If he played his cards right, he could possibly tempt Jack to…

Nope. Jack got out of the car as soon as the parked and loaded his arms with a box from the boot. Ianto followed in suit, still quiet, because the atmosphere was starting to shift to something just south of strained.

They unpacked Ianto’s clothes into Jack’s closet, which was… significant. It meant Ianto was here to stay, at least for now, even with the frigid air that surrounded his existence here.

And emphasis on _frigid_ , because Ianto tried, yet _again_ , to instigate something, to hopefully alleviate some of the tension and bring them back to something normal, but Jack still brushed him aside. He even walked out of the bedroom while Ianto was in midsentence. Ianto, mystified, trailed out after him, following him to the sitting room where Jack had Ianto sit on his old sofa.

“So,” Jack said, folding his arms and looking down at Ianto. “Culture shock. We need to reorient you.”

“Oh, come on,” Ianto scoffed. “It’s seven years, not three thousand.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Who’s the former Time Agent, here?”

Ianto rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut.

“Trust me,” Jack said. “Even seven years is enough to bring some people to their knees.”

Oh, what a perfect innuendo that just slipped by…

“Knew a guy displaced by five years. Couldn’t cope,” Jack said. “I’m not letting that happen to you. So. Here we go. Technology.”

He threw a flat rectangle at Ianto, who barely caught it. It was heavier than he expected. Wait, hadn’t he seen this yesterday? The kid was holding it when he woke up.

“IPad.”

“Okay…” Ianto said, slowly turning it over a few times in his hands.

“UNIT gave it to me for my job, but Ioan tends to use it more than me. Downloaded a sheep-abducting alien game once to distract him in the car. Now he can’t let it go. Alien abductions. All the rage of the twenty-first century, before you start realising how horrible abductions really are.”

Ianto could see the grubby little fingerprints adorning the screen. So he had been right, before. Like a PDA.

“Hang on,” Ianto said, frowning. “You work for UNIT?”

Jack shrugged.

“Doing what?” Ianto asked.

“Classified.”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “I thought we were beyond all the ‘classified’ things by now.”

“That was Torchwood,” Jack said. “This is UNIT. It’s different.”

“I wasn’t talking about Torchwood,” Ianto murmured to himself.

Jack studied Ianto for another second with an inscrutable face.

“Anyway,” he continued abruptly, “I can show you how it works.”

They spent three hours on filling in the seven-year gap in Ianto’s existence. Ianto realised very quickly that Jack had been right. This stuff was confusing. What the hell was a ‘Brexit?’ The Queen was still alive? Why was a rover on Mars and how did it find water? Why did mobiles look so different? And how did literally everyone forget about the Daleks in the sky?

One of the most welcoming bits of information that Jack passed on to Ianto was of what became of Gwen and her child. Anwen was apparently Ioan’s best friend. That was nice, Ianto supposed, but he’d know more about that later when he met the kid. For now, though, he’d just have to settle for calling Gwen on the phone, because kids were at school and Gwen was out with a cold (Jack didn’t want her coming over and getting her germs everywhere because Ioan would get sick).

“I bloody hate you, you know,” Gwen sniffed when she had finished her near half an hour of sobbing through the phone.

“Yeah.”

She sniffed again. “I’d give you a right slap if I could.”

“I know.”

“Christ. I bloody missed you.”

“I’d say the same, but it was kind of like three days ago that I saw you.”

“Well, it’s been a bit longer for the rest of us.”

“So I’d heard,” he said. “You have a kid?”

She gave a half-laugh. “Two, actually. Anwen and Evan Williams.”

“How very Welsh of you.”

“You’re one to talk, _Ianto Jones_.”

There was a polite silence as Gwen removed her mobile from her face to go cough up her lungs and blow her nose. Ianto waited patiently until she returned.

“So. How is life?” she asked.

“Well,” he said uncertainly. “I have a son now, apparently.”

“Oh, he’s a sweetheart, isn’t he?” she cooed.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Give him a bit. He’ll warm up to you.”

Ianto raised his eyebrows to himself, very doubtful of Gwen’s assurances. If the interactions the two of them had yesterday and today were any sort of indication of how their relationship would go, Ianto and Ioan would probably remain strangers forever.

Thankfully, Gwen switched topics, and she rambled on and on about Rhys’s promotion for a good long while. Ianto sat back and barely listened, choosing to watch Jack fuss about in the kitchen.

Gwen eventually had to ring off, and Ianto handed Jack’s mobile back to him. Jack slipped it in his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Ianto asked, looking around the kitchen.

“Trying to figure out what I’m going to make for dinner.”

Ianto felt his eyebrows raise high on his forehead. “You. Making dinner.”

“I do it every night.”

“You never made _me_ dinner,” Ianto said playfully, sliding behind Jack and peering over his shoulder in a way he knew would get Jack all bothered.

“You never asked me to,” Jack said.

He moved away from Ianto, leaving Ianto once again stunned at the almost hostile tone and the blatant refusal of physical contact.

“Jack—” Ianto started.

“Rhiannon doesn’t know,” Jack instantly cut him off.

“What?”

“She doesn’t know I—we—have a kid,” Jack said. He wasn’t looking at Ianto; he was crouching down and rummaging through a cupboard for some pot or pan. “I didn’t know how to tell her.”

“I… okay,” Ianto said, confused as hell.

“You’ll have to think of a way to explain it to her,” Jack said, pulling out what he wanted from the cupboard and setting it on the counter, still not facing Ianto. “If you want to tell her you’re alive, that is.”

“Of course I want to tell her I’m alive, I’m not a—”

He stopped abruptly when a strange noise came from Jack’s person. Jack took his mobile out from his pocket, glanced down at it, and tapped the screen, instantly halting the ringing noise.

“Time to go get Ioan,” Jack said.

The drive to Ioan’s school was silent, as was the wait. Sometimes, Ianto wanted to open his mouth and ask why Jack was being so weird, or where the mood from yesterday afternoon had gone, but thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. If Jack was pissy, then it was best to simply wait his mood out.

When the crowds of children came spilling out, it was easy to pick out Ioan. A short, lanky, mini-Ianto with blue behind the ears, all slumped over with the very look of exhaustion. He hopped in the car, looking glumly up at Jack, until he spotted Ianto. Then he glanced down at his shoes, kicking his toes together as he buckled himself into his seat in silence.

When they arrived back at the house, Jack got out and lifted Ioan out of the car, carrying him back inside. Jack only set him down at the door to take off shoes, coats, and Ioan’s bag, then picked him up again and carried him to the sitting room. Jack laid down on Ianto’s sofa, letting Ioan drape himself over Jack’s chest. Ianto watched from behind the sofa as Jack tossed soft curls out of the way so he could loop Ioan’s hearing aids out of his ears and set them aside on the coffee table. Then Jack wrapped his arms around Ioan, and they stayed that way for some time, Ioan snoozing as Jack held him close and Ianto standing in the background, all alone.

If there was any reminder that this was not Ianto’s world, not Ianto’s timeline, then it was that kid.

Dinner that night was some salmon dish with roasted greens. Ianto had to admit, it was pretty good. But he was still keeping his mouth shut and letting Jack tire his sour mood out, so he didn’t say much about anything the entire meal. It made the meal very quiet, as Ioan was unwilling to say a word while Ianto was around, Jack was moody, and Ianto was waiting. Ianto was fairly certain he was the one feeling the most awkward.

God, Ianto had literally never felt so unwelcome in his life.

* * *

Ianto was in the middle of a strange dream where he was feeding his own fingers to Myfanwy when he was very suddenly and rather rudely woken. There was a split second after he woke up where he wondered where the fuck he was, who the fuck he was, and what the fuck was going on. Then a couple of events happened at once and he was even more confused.

There was a lot of coughing. A lot. Someone small was hacking their insides up, it sounded like. Also, at the same time, someone was trying to roll over him. Or possibly shove him off the bed. Or both.

“What the—” came a voice.

“Jack?” Ianto asked when he finally placed who the figure over him was.

Jack stopped trying to roll off the bed (he probably forgot Ianto was there in the first place, which Ianto tried not to think about for the sake of his already lost pride) and started crawling over him frantically. Ianto pulled his knees up to his chest so that he was out of the way, and Jack slid off the bed and practically sprinted out of the room.

The coughing hadn’t stopped at all, and Ianto sat up as the hallway light flicked in and illuminated a sliver of the room. Ioan was sitting up on the other side of the bed, holding his chest as he coughed and coughed. Ianto barely had time to wonder what was wrong before Jack was dashing back in, shaking something in his hand as he knelt down at Ioan’s bedside.

Ianto knew an inhaler when he saw one. Shit. What else was up with this kid?

“Okay, you know what to do,” Jack told Ioan gently. “All the way out.”

Ioan obediently exhaled as best as he could.

Jack stopped shaking the inhaler and held it to Ioan’s lips, who breathed in as Jack pressed down on the inhaler. Jack pulled the inhaler from Ioan’s mouth after a few seconds.

“And one,” Jack said, looking down at his wrist strap, “two… three… four…”

Jack counted up to ten, and then Ioan exhaled slowly, giving a slight cough as he did. Jack waited for a moment, observing Ioan breathe in and out, until he evidently decided Ioan was going to be okay. Then he stood back up, kissed the top of Ioan’s forehead, and walked out of the room.

Ioan immediately laid back down and pulled the covers over him again. Ianto watched him with a frown until the hallway light flicked off and Ianto could no longer see the lump of blanket. Jack crawled over Ianto again and back under the covers, returning to his cuddling with Ioan without another word.

Ianto took the hint. He turned his back to them and tried to get back to his own restless sleep.

* * *

Ianto’s morning went much like the morning before. He woke up alone, found Jack and Ioan getting ready to face the day, ate breakfast, and then sat awkwardly in the passenger seat as Jack drove Ioan to school.

The schedule varied when Jack received a call as soon as they stepped foot in the house. His tone was hushed and urgent from the very moment he picked up, and he stalked off into the depths of the house. Ianto stood at the door awkwardly, then pulled off his shoes and hung up his coat and began to wander.

There were a few pieces of furniture around the house that hadn’t been Ianto’s, which was good, because Ianto’s furniture hadn’t been that great to begin with, and seven more years of usage wasn’t doing them any favours. And, thankfully, none of the décor was Ianto’s. He was dead certain that none of his Bond posters could have lasted another year, much less seven. Plus, they were the dressing of a twenty-six-year-old’s flat, and not of a single father’s house.

The one thing that did strike Ianto as odd was the photo on the mantel in the sitting room. It was Ianto’s own photo of him and Lisa, back on their… oh, he couldn’t remember which number date that was. Sad, really, but they hadn’t thought to count their dates until much later, when Lisa had gone off with some girlfriends of hers for the evening and come back with stories of all of their boyfriends and dates with numbers. But it had to have been their seventh date, or something similar, because that picnic had been the day that Ianto had realised how madly in love he was.

But it was strange to see the photo on Jack’s mantel. Surely, there was a better picture of him out there. A picture where he didn’t look like a sop in an ugly brown polo. Or at least a picture of Ianto that was more current, a picture of a Ianto that Jack had known.

Another odd thing was Ioan’s bedroom. “Bedroom.” Ianto had no proof that it had ever been used as an actual bedroom. The last two nights when Jack had told a story to Ioan, the kid had always been sitting on top of the covers, and never under them. The pretence of it all was more baffling than the actual lack of use. Why bother setting the child in the bed in the first place, if he was only going to get up five minutes later and join Jack in the real bed? Another thing Ianto would have to ask Jack about later.

Ianto was preparing to do a more thorough inspection of the true bedroom when he found Jack in there. More specifically, he found Jack in there, dusting.

Captain Jack Harkness. Dusting. With a duster.

When the hell had Jack learned how to dust?

Ianto watched Jack in shock for a few seconds, wondering what other sorts of domesticity Jack had pulled out of his hat after Ianto had died. God, did Jack do the laundry now? Ianto would _pay_ to see that.

He looked away to the bed quickly when Jack caught him staring, unsure why he felt guilty about being caught. He supposed it might have been the attitude Jack exuded. Used to be he’d get a good leer for staring at Jack’s arse, not a semi-confrontational frown.

“It was the boxes,” Jack said, which made very little sense to Ianto.

“I see,” Ianto said, even though he didn’t.

“From the storage facility,” Jack went on. “They tracked in dust. Probably what caused Ioan’s asthma to flare.”

Asthma. Made sense, with the coughing and the inhaler. Ianto didn’t know why he hadn’t figured it out sooner; what else did people use inhalers for? But, still, it made him wonder…

Well, it was like this. Jack was strong, fit, and healthy. While he was in no way perfect, he certainly had the benefit of good fifty-first century genetics. There were probably hundreds of things that were reversable or modifiable by then. Plus, Jack was just… Jack. _Definitely_ not perfect, but damn near it, or at least as close as one could get. So, the idea that this child, _their_ child, could have… whatever problems he had, it couldn’t have come from Jack.

“Is it my fault?” Ianto blurted out, before he meant to say anything.

Jack’s frown deepened. “What?”

“Um,” Ianto said, unsure how to back out now. “The asthma. And the… you know…” He made a gesture to his ears. “It’s… that’s my fault, isn’t it?”

There was a definite moment where time and space froze in place as the look on Jack’s face turned to absolute fury.

“It’s nobody’s _fault_ ,” Jack spat. “They’re not _faults_.”

Ianto found himself taking a physical step back. “I didn’t mean—"

“Why the hell would you think they’re faults?”

Ianto could have taken the glib route and responded, “societal norms of the twenty-first century,” but he was not about to go down that road. Jack, on the other hand, was fully prepared to take that journey.

“All you twenty-first century people,” he snarled, “with your constant need to eradicate the imperfect and ostracise the other. Of course you’d think they’re faults.”

“Jack, that’s not what I’m—"

“Isn’t it?” Jack cut over him, folding his arms. “You want to put a blame on someone, something, so that there can be absolution. Or maybe a chance to find a way to fix it.”

“Well, asthma can’t be that fun to have, I’m sure you’d also like to—”

“I wouldn’t change a damn thing about him,” Jack interrupted, just as Ianto remembered why it was so fucking hard to argue with this man. “Don’t you get that? _Could_ you get that?”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Ianto asked, finally starting to get angry on his own behalf.

“You don’t even know him! You can’t just waltz in here and demand to know why he is the way he is when you don’t know the half of it!”

“That’s still not—I couldn’t—” Ianto spluttered.

“You weren’t here for a single second of it!”

“I was _dead_!” Ianto yelled. “You can’t blame me for—”

This time, Ianto cut himself off, because oh. _Oh_. _Now_ he got it. The looks and the attitude and the erratic, not-entirely-logical shouting… goddamn it.

“Are you really just pissed at me because I was _dead_?” he demanded.

A range of emotions crossed over Jack’s face as a beat of silence passed between them.

“Maybe,” Jack said, jaw tightly set.

Ianto heaved a sigh. Sometimes Jack got so worked up even _he_ didn’t know what he was worked up about. And then it was generally something as nonsensical as this.

“You cannot be mad at me because I died,” Ianto said plainly.

“Why not?” Jack asked.

“Because you just can’t,” Ianto snapped. “I mean, it’s not _my_ fault!”

“You’re the one who chose to stay in the House of the Dead!”

“ _Someone_ had to stay! Do you really blame me for that when the only other option was you? I had to!”

There was, oddly, no response from Jack. Instead, he just stared at Ianto with a blank look on his face.

Ianto put his hands on his hips and glared at Jack. “ _What_?”

“There was a UNIT squad on the way,” Jack said, his voice trembling slightly with anger. “Twenty minutes, Ianto. Twenty minutes, and we both could’ve gotten out alive and well, with only a negligible part of Wales missing.”

“I didn’t know that!” Ianto yelled. “What do you expect me to do about that? Go back and fix it? What am I supposed to do to fix that?” 

There was another pause, and Ianto realised instantly that he had just misread the past few moments, because Jack was clearly no longer angry, but rather on the verge of tears.

“Not leave me in the first place,” Jack whispered, his voice breaking.

And suddenly the anger didn’t matter anymore, because Ianto’s body was carrying him over to Jack before he even noticed it, and Ianto found he couldn’t do anything but hold onto Jack as Jack sobbed into him. Ianto found himself crying, too, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

“I’m not going anywhere now,” Ianto murmured to Jack when his tears had come to a halt.

Then Ianto kissed Jack, just like he had wished to do since the first moment he had laid eyes on the man in this brand new life of his.

* * *

“We should really clean the sheets,” Jack said.

Ianto grunted, not really coherent enough for a true response.

“Really,” Jack said. “Ioan sleeps in these.”

Ianto’s brain kicked in then. “Fuck. Does that mean we have to clean the sheets… oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Can’t he sleep in his own bed for a while?”

Jack folded his arms.

“Seriously, what does he even have his own room and bed for if he doesn’t use it?” Ianto asked.

“In case he _does_ want to sleep alone,” Jack said.

Ianto sighed, because as far as Ianto could tell, Ioan wasn’t about to sleep in his own bed for a while, not if he was that clingy.

“Did your parents have to clean the bed every time, too?” Ianto asked. “What with you sleeping in their bed with them?”

Jack pulled a disgusted face. “Those were my _parents_ , Ianto. Don’t ask me about that!”

“I thought you fifty-first century lot were open about sex and all that.”

“Parent sex will always be disturbing, no matter the time period,” Jack said. Then he shook himself. “Okay. Up. We’re cleaning these _now_.”

Ianto then remembered his earlier fascination about Jack doing the laundry, so he hopped up and began pulling out the sheets and covers from the bed on the opposite side of Jack.

“I don’t like sleeping on this side, just so you know,” Ianto said.

“Ioan doesn’t either. He’s freakishly a lot like you.”

“I’m assuming that has to do with that thing you told Gwen about, that… multi… spatial… stuff.”

“Spatial genetic multiplicity,” Jack corrected.

“Yes. That.”

“It’s possible. The Rift does tend to play a heavy hand in that.” Jack shrugged as they tugged out the last of the sheets. “I just like to think that he was a gift from the universe.”

“How poetic.”

Jack shrugged again, and they carried the load of soiled sheets and blankets down to the wash machine. Ianto stood back and watched as Jack loaded it. Huh. He had no idea he could be so entertained by Jack doing basic household activities. Something to revisit later, he supposed.

They had just returned to the bedroom to replace the sheets and covers on the bed when Ianto remembered something.

“‘A _negligible_ part of Wales?’” Ianto asked Jack incredulously.

Jack frowned for a moment, then seemed to recall the last part of the conversation prior to their belated post-death fuck and managed a sheepish grin.

“Sorry?” he tried.

“There is no negligible part of Wales,” Ianto muttered darkly, putting his hands on his hips.

“Nobody would have missed the few houses. Certainly not as much as I missed you.”

“Good to know I’m better than a few bits of rubbish real estate.”

“Ianto, you are better than most anything,” Jack said.

Ianto basked in the glow of that statement for a moment. And then another thing occurred to him.

“Oh, you bastard,” Ianto said. “You utter bastard.”

“What?”

“You were pregnant! What the hell were you thinking? You were about to obliterate yourself and you were pregnant!”

“Not… my best moment,” was all Jack said. “I came to my senses afterward.”

“And you had the audacity to yell at _me_ for stopping you!”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean to get so mad at you.”

Jack sighed and Ianto blinked at him. Jack didn’t do apologies that often. Not like this.

“I just… Every time you made a comment that reminded me you weren’t there,” Jack said, “it made me so furious, because you _should_ have been there. You _could_ have been there. But you _weren’t_. And I’m so… angry. Or sad. Or something. Upset, I guess. I’m upset that you weren’t here with us.”

“Me too,” Ianto said softly.

And he was. He was so upset that he left Jack alone like this, barely clinging onto reality and saved only by the birth of a child. He had never wanted to leave Jack, because he had known how well Jack could spiral, and yet he still did just that. Leave. Die. Whatever.

But he was also upset because well… Alright. Like Jack had said, he knew next to nothing about this kid. Ioan Jones. And yet, despite it all, despite never having planned on having children or never having been very good with children, there was definitely something there. A connection of sorts. Ianto felt drawn to the boy, if maybe only because he was Ianto’s flesh and blood. Even still, that was enough for Ianto to want to be a part of Ioan’s life. To be a part of something he and Jack made.

Plus, Ianto had to admit, the kid was sort of cute. Ianto certainly hadn’t looked that cute. Had he? Nah. It was just the boy.

So, yeah. Ianto mourned not having helped Jack raise Ioan.

Hopefully, he’d get the chance to do so now. Of course, that all depended on Ioan, didn’t it?

“He’s really shy,” Jack said, as if he was reading Ianto’s thoughts. Maybe he was. Ianto still wasn’t certain about those comments Jack had used to make on telepathy. If the whole Jack-getting-pregnant-once comment was true, then maybe… “He’s just… He doesn’t like things until he tries them.”

“That’s everybody,” Ianto said. “Everybody’s like that.”

“I know, I know,” Jack said. “But Ioan… he’s scared of everything until he tries it. And then he likes it. But you can’t convince him he’ll like it before he tries it, even if it’s something you know he likes, or something he’s tried before and can’t remember. He’s timid.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is, he’ll like you once he…”

“Tries me?” Ianto suggested when Jack trailed off.

“Gets to know you,” Jack finished, throwing a gentle scowl at Ianto.

“Right.”

They finished tucking in the sheets, and Ianto started fluffing the pillows for good measure. Might as well make the entire bed look nice.

“I thought it was my fault, too,” Jack said as Ianto set the last pillow down.

Ianto nodded. He knew. This was Jack Harkness, the man who blamed himself for everything, even if it wasn’t actually his fault, so it was rather obvious that Jack had thought anything even remotely different about Ioan was his fault at one point.

“Martha talked me down,” Jack continued. “She always does.”

“Does this mean I can ask about it again without you jumping down my throat?” Ianto asked.

Oh, there was Jack’s patented leer. How Ianto missed that leer.

“I’m being serious,” Ianto said, rolling his eyes.

“Come on, let a guy live a little,” Jack said.

Ianto cocked an eyebrow.

“Alright, alright. Jeez.” Jack sighed and sobered a little.

Then he began explaining it to Ianto. Whatever mild persistent asthma was, it didn’t make a lick of sense to Ianto. Ianto thought there was only one type of asthma: just plain asthma. Evidently not. And the hearing… mild too, Jack said.

“Well, our audiologist’s colleague said it was moderate hearing loss,” Jack amended, “but both Martha and Dr. Martin thought it was slightly more on the mild side.”

“Oh,” Ianto said, because that was all he could think to say.

Mild and mild. Ianto supposed that “mild” was slightly misleading in both cases; it was clear that they both had an impact on Ioan that was in no way mild, but Ianto did see the irony in it. Mild was a very good way to describe the boy. Ioan was a very… _gentle_ child, from what Ianto could tell.

“I mean the good thing is that we caught it that early,” Jack went on. “Got Ioan adjusted to hearing aids early on. Made sure he was able to hear people better. Well, sort of better. Let me tell you, hearing aids in my time are a lot better than the hearing aids of here and now. You can’t even go underwater with twenty-first century hearing aids, did you know that?”

Ianto did not.

“And they wear him out so easily.” Jack sighed. “Poor kid.”

“You just want what’s best for him,” Ianto observed.

“Doesn’t every parent want that?” Jack asked.

“I suppose. I guess I wouldn’t know.”

Jack gave him a sad smile. “You will.”

Ianto held his gaze for a moment, then had to drop it. The tenderness in there was… a little too much, at the moment.

“That’s your alarm,” Ianto said quietly as a ringing noise came from Jack’s nightstand. “Time to go get Ioan.”

“Yep.”

Now that Ianto knew why Ioan looked so exhausted when they picked him up, he began to understand Jack’s frustration. The boy was only, what, six and a half? And yet he had to work harder than most of the kids in his class just to hear the teacher. Jack had said on the way to the school that it was alright, because Ioan was at least twice as smart as the smartest kid in the classroom. He has your brain, Jack had told him, though to what brain Jack was referring, Ianto wasn’t sure about. Jack gave him a look of disbelief when Ianto voiced that. Then Jack called him an idiot, so Ianto wasn’t entirely certain which point Jack was trying to make, and Ioan had gotten in the car and that was the end of that.

Jack carried Ioan inside and Ianto followed closely behind. Ianto took his old chair in the corner while Jack and Ioan stretched out on the sofa like they had the day before. Ianto wondered if that was an afterschool ritual of theirs: sleeping on the sofa. Must have been, because Ioan was asleep in minutes, snoring gently on Jack’s chest.

“Look,” Jack said in a loud whisper.

He pointed a finger at Ioan’s open mouth.

“His teeth are growing in,” Jack said, showing Ianto the two tiny white specks in Ioan’s otherwise empty upper, foremost gums.

Jack smiled to himself and plopped a kiss on Ioan’s head, wrapping his arms around his son. Ianto watched in silence.

Seven years. Ianto had missed seven years of Jack’s life, and the entirety of Ioan’s. Ianto wanted to fix that, but there was no way for him to rewrite the past. Instead he had to live with what he was dealt. Jack would be willing—Jack _is_ willing—to accept Ianto back, just as Ianto was willing to return to him. But Ioan…

Like he had mused before, Ianto couldn’t deny the connection. He couldn’t deny the wish to be part of this, part of the whole. Part of Ioan’s life. Someone to watch him grow and love and protect him, just like Jack did for him. Someone to be excited about growing teeth and someone to hold him while he took his afterschool nap.

Yes. Ianto wanted that very much.

* * *

After a week and a half (or so), Ianto decided that he could not take it any longer. That goddamn toothbrush was just too small. Ianto pitched it in the trash, then tried to steal Jack’s car to get to a store. Jack caught him, admonished him for driving when his licence expired upon his death seven years ago, then opted to take both Ianto and Ioan out on a shopping trip.

“A family trip,” Jack had said as he put Ioan’s mittens on Ioan’s tiny hands.

“A family trip,” Ianto parroted to himself quietly as they filed out the door.

Some family trip this was. An immortal father, a shy son, and the tagalong dead man, out to shop for a toothbrush.

Ioan clung to Jack like a limpet the entire time. He hadn’t quite gotten over watching Ianto with suspicious looks and terrified glances. Ianto, on the other hand, had attempted to be kinder and gentler with the boy. It was evidently not appreciated.

“Right. I gotta pee,” Jack said as they were arguing over brands of toothpaste. Good to know certain vulgarities never changed with Jack. “I’ll be back.”

Then he left Ioan with Ianto.

“Hi,” Ianto said.

Ioan stared up at him with wide blue eyes. He said nothing.

“So, um…” Ianto said. “Your dad says you’re good at maths.”

Ioan blinked.

“And reading. And… everything else, really.” Ianto wished he was better at engaging with children. “Do you like school?”

“Yes,” Ioan said. His voice was so quiet that Ianto could barely hear it.

“That’s good,” Ianto said. “I never liked school.”

Ioan had nothing to say to that. Or anything else Ianto said to him in the next four minutes.

“Right,” Ianto muttered to himself. “Glad we had this talk.”

Ioan frowned and squinted slightly at him. Jack said this was his face for when he couldn't hear very well. Ianto opened his mouth to say something to cover for himself, but he felt a hand on his shoulders.

“There’s my boys,” Jack said happily.

“You sound like Gwen,” Ianto said.

“I still think you should get the sensitive toothpaste.”

“My teeth aren’t sensitive,” Ianto sighed, not particularly happy to return to this argument.

“Yes, but it’s good for them!”

In the end, Jack got his way, because Jack always got his way, and Ianto went home with a red toothbrush (and a second for backup, because he was nothing if not prepared) and a toothpaste he didn’t necessarily like. Jack promised to make it up to him. Ianto just wondered how Jack planned on doing that, what with Ioan in the same bed as them and all. The sofa couldn’t handle that type of pressure, not after seven years.

Speaking of that bed, though… thankfully it was big, because now Jack had taken to trying to snuggle up with Ioan and Ianto both at the same time. It generally meant Jack was starfishing on the bed while Ianto curled up to one side and Ioan on the other, Jack snoring loudly between them with an arm wrapped around each. Largely uncomfortable, Ianto had to admit, but fair all the way around. Well, mostly fair.

Once or twice, Ianto caught Ioan peeking his head over Jack’s body at Ianto. Ianto would always stare back in confusion, wondering what it was the kid wanted with him, but then the head would pop back down and Ioan would bury himself closer into Jack. Jack’s knee-jerk reaction to this was to mumble slightly to himself in his sleep, then roll over and hold Ioan in both arms.

Ianto vaguely wondered to himself if Ioan was trying to make it a competition. Ioan would win, of course. The priority of a child came well before that of an adult, especially when the child in question was Ioan. Ianto’s ego took a little bit of a knock, but he could understand that. As long as Jack still… _cared_ about Ianto, then it didn’t matter who won the most affection.

“Oh, you’re talking nonsense,” Gwen said when she came to visit.

Jack had gone out on one of his “missions” (as Gwen liked to call them; she didn’t have any more information about them than Ianto did), so that for whatever reason meant Gwen had to come join Ianto in babysitting. Not that Ianto was complaining. He definitely needed the help. He still had no idea how to _talk_ to Ioan, much less be a parent of any sort to him. Plus, with Ioan being best friends with Anwen, it meant Ianto got to see a playful side to Ioan that he had never seen before. Anwen seemed to be a little bossy in her play, but Ioan evidently liked it all the same.

“He’s just timid,” Gwen finished, “that’s all.”

“Yes, so I’ve gathered,” he sighed.

“I’m serious,” she said. “He’s afraid for two reasons. He’s shy, and he doesn’t understand that you’re not here to take away something important to him. It never occurred to him that this is addition, and not subtraction.”

“What does maths have to do with my son disliking me?”

“First off, he doesn’t _dislike_ you, just not understand you, so get that through your head,” she said. “And second, it’s… well. Think of it this way. Ioan has had no one in his life but Jack. Jack is the one person Ioan loves and cherishes most in this entire world. His most important person. And to Ioan, he’s only ever been the same to Jack. They had each other.”

“Enter me,” he said dryly.

“Yes, enter you,” she said. “You, who takes Jack’s attention from him. You, who sleeps in the same bed—which, by the way, is still a hazard, and I wish you’d tell Jack that. And you, who Jack loves and cherishes just as much as he does Ioan. Differently, of course, but not less. Is it any wonder Ioan feels threatened by you?”

“You’re not exactly helping, you know.”

Gwen held up a hand for Ianto’s silence. “But what he doesn’t get is that he’s not getting less of a parent, he’s gaining a whole new one. Sure, Jack’s attention will be divided, and so will yours, but ultimately, there will be two people loving and cherishing him, not just one. He’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“I doubt it,” Ianto scoffed.

“Shush. Give him the benefit of the doubt, will you? He’s a sweet kid.”

A fond smile grew on her face, and he turned to join her in watching Anwen and Ioan play some game with toy cars that was beyond Ianto’s imagination. As far as he could tell, the cars were actually animals? At least, that was what Ianto thought was going on. Either that, or Anwen’s green car was making snappy crocodile noises and Ioan’s blue car was flying like a bat for absolutely no reason.

“Maaaaaaaammyyyyyy!”

Little Evan came toddling over, a red car and orange car in either fist.

“Cars,” he told Gwen. “ _My_ cars.”

“Oh, not again,” she murmured.

At Ianto’s puzzled look, she explained, “He keeps stealing Ioan’s cars and taking them home with us. It’s a bit…” She cut herself off with a sigh. “I’m very tired of finding Ioan’s cars in my boots, to be honest.”

“My cars,” Evan said again as he made an attempt to climb up onto Gwen’s lap.

She hoisted him up and set him down. Ianto reached out a hand and patted Evan’s head. Gwen threw him a curious look, and that was how Ianto learned not to pat children like dogs. Though Evan didn’t seem to care. At least someone didn’t mind the introduction of complete strangers into their family. “Unco Yantoe” was very popular with Evan.

Jack came home that evening, to Gwen’s surprise (she said it could often take multiple days for him to return, with six days being the longest). Ianto took one look at the haunted glaze behind Jack’s eyes and nearly panicked. The only time Ianto had ever seen that particular look was when Flat Holm or Gray were involved. Gwen didn’t comment on the matter, so Ianto began to worry that this was a common occurrence.

After giving a long kiss and hug to Ioan, Jack asked if Gwen could take him for the night. She did appear to baulk a little at that, but accepted, and she and Jack got Ioan ready to go in record time. Jack gave Ioan another hug and kiss, told the boy he loved him and promised to retrieve him right away next morning.

When the three children and Gwen left, Jack turned to Ianto and threw himself into Ianto’s arms, which had been waiting for this moment since the instant Ianto had seen him walk through the door with that exact expression.

“Promise me you’ll never leave me,” Jack whispered into the tender skin of Ianto’s neck.

Ianto rested his head on Jack’s shoulder. Whatever Jack needed, Ianto was ready to supply.

“I promise,” he whispered back.

Jack caught Ianto’s mouth in a searing kiss, and that was all that mattered for the rest of the night.

* * *

In the wake of Ianto’s death, Jack had evidently found himself part of the Jones family. A different Jones family than Ianto’s, but Joneses all the same. A few weeks after his arrival, Ianto had the chance to meet them.

He already knew Martha, of course, and she was terribly ecstatic to see him again. On the contrary, Martha’s mother and sister didn’t know him and seemed almost wary of him. Francine Jones’s eyes kept wandering around him, as if calculating to find fault, and Tish Jones’s gaze was often sceptical or confused. Honestly, if Ianto had known meeting every new person in Jack’s life would go over this awfully, he might have tried to stay in the Rift. He was three for three with unwelcome meetings.

One thing Ianto found odd was that Ioan called Francine “Nanna” and nobody blinked an eye. Jack actually seemed to encourage this behaviour. Ianto kept his mouth shut, even though it did make him a bit… _jealous_.

“So,” Francine Jones said after Jack stepped out to take a call. “You’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” Ianto agreed, unsure of where this was headed.

“After, what? Seven years?”

“About that much, yes,” Ianto said.

“Hm.”

“Mum,” Martha said warningly.

“What?” Francine asked. “I’m just bringing to light what we’re all thinking.”

“And what’s that?” Martha asked, folding her arms.

“Well,” Francine said. “That’s a long time for someone to be gone.”

Oh, hell. Not this again.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Ianto said.

“Oh, yes, you were dead and all,” Francine said. “Twice, I hear.”

“Both times attempting to keep the world safe.”

Ianto had to admit, he may have only said that for dramatic flair and possibly to earn some brownie points with Ioan. And he may have even scored them, because Ioan poked his head out from the other side of Francine. He disappeared again within an instant, but Ianto saw the barest hints of interest on his face.

“There are other people who could do that, you know,” Francine said.

“Mum!”

“Well, it’s true,” Francine told Martha. She turned back to Ianto. “There are people who didn’t have a child to raise.”

There were points to be made on how Ianto was no more important than any other person and how saving the world was his job, but he felt that neither would fly very far with Francine Jones.

Instead, he simply said, “I didn’t know there was a child at the time.”

“Is that what we’re supposed to live with, then?” Francine asked. “‘If I had knowns’ and ‘I would have been there if I could haves?’”

“But I would have,” Ianto protested. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, pish.” Francine waved a hand in dismissal. “That’s no use to anyone now. It’s far too late for that.”

By now, even Tish was looking rather uncomfortable.

“Mum, I don’t think that’s fair,” she said.

“Fair? This isn’t about fair,” Francine shot back. “This is about not being there for one’s partner and child.”

Ianto could feel the anger growing in his chest. “It’s not like I chose that!”

“Perhaps not, but how can you be trusted now to make that decision?” Francine folded her hands on her lap. “How can anyone be sure you have the best interests of your family at heart? How can we be sure you won’t just up and leave again?”

Ianto, who had spent the past two years of his life dealing with rude politicians on Jack’s behalf, was well versed in dealing with baseless accusations. However, this one really pissed him off. Did people really think this little of him?

“With all due respect,” he said, trying to keep the anger out of his tone, “I don’t think you understand at all. I was _dead_ for seven years. Do you have any idea what that’s like? I missed everything! Do—do you really think I would give this up to leave—to _die_ —again?”

“I don’t know,” Francine said coolly. “Would you?”

“No!” Ianto shouted. He took a deep breath, attempting to compose himself again. “Absolutely not. I chose to stay with Jack because I… I love him. I’m not leaving him again. And I missed the entire life of… of my son. I don’t want to miss any more. I want to… I want to do right by him.”

There was a silence that settled over all five Joneses. Ianto looked down at his hands and tried to calm himself down a little, because things never really went over well when he was angry with people he hardly knew. When he looked back up again, Tish and Martha had a scandalised air about them, while Francine was watching him with an intrigued expression.

“Well,” Francine said. “I think that settles that.”

“Sorry?” Ianto asked, confused.

“Welcome to the family, Mr. Jones,” she said. “Don’t do something stupid, and we’ll be very much happy to have you.”

Then she stood and held out a hand to Ioan.

“Come on, darling,” she said. “Let’s go get you a snack.”

Ioan hopped down off the sofa and took her hand, following her into the kitchen. He threw a glance over his shoulder at Ianto, curiosity written all over his face. When he caught Ianto staring back in confusion, he blinked and quickly turned forwards again, pressing himself close to Francine as they disappeared into the next room.

“Oh my god,” Tish murmured to herself as soon as the two vanished, leaning back into her chair.

“I’m so sorry,” Martha told to Ianto. “She’s just… she did that with Mickey, too, when I introduced him to her.”

Ianto didn’t remember who this “Mickey” guy was, but evidently Ianto had met him over the giant Space Skype with the Doctor during the Dalek incident that nobody remembered. Jack told him that Mickey and Martha were engaged, and so Ianto had been trying to place a face to the name, but he couldn’t quite puzzle it out. Oh, well. Someday he’ll meet the man and figure it out.

“She’s insane,” Tish said as she sank even further into her chair. “This is why I’m never dating ever again.”

“You’re the reason she’s like this,” Martha said.

“No, _you_ are. She only started acting like this after you went off with the Doctor.”

“I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t me, because she was definitely like this to Annalise,” Martha said.

“Oh. Right.”

The two of them shared a look.

“Dad,” they agreed in unison.

“Anyway,” Martha said to Ianto, “she’ll let up a bit now. Maybe even be nice.”

“Good to know,” Ianto said, frankly still feeling a bit frazzled by the entire encounter.

Honestly, the worst part of it all was that Ianto didn’t even have the chance to mention it to Jack, to make Jack laugh with the absurdity of the situation and to have Jack assure him that Francine won’t try to roast him alive like that ever again.

When Jack had returned from his call, there was a grave look on his face, and he told Ianto to get ready to leave.

“You’re going to take Ioan home,” Jack said. “I have to go. Now.”

“I can’t take your car. You said—”

“I don’t care about your licence now,” Jack said. “I need you to take Ioan home.”

“Alright,” Ianto said, slightly baffled by the severity of Jack’s tone. Just what exactly had Jack gotten himself into? “What about you?”

“There’s a car coming to pick me up.”

“When will you be back?” Ianto asked.

“I don’t know. This one is—I just don’t know, alright? Take him home and keep him happy and safe.”

“I will,” Ianto promised, accepting the kiss Jack planted on his lips.

“I love you,” Jack told him.

It was only the second time Jack had told him that, and the first time that wasn’t soured by imminent death, but Ianto had no time to revel in it, because Jack went off to go attempt to convince Ioan to get into the car and go home without him. That was no small feat, because Ioan clung to Jack and had to be torn from him by Tish. Jack looked a mess by the time Ianto got into the car and drove off, which terrified Ianto slightly. As he had no clue what was going on, he just hoped to god that Jack would come back alright.

Another thing that terrified Ianto was that, well, he really didn’t have a licence. It was one of those things where, while improbable that a mistake would be made, it felt like there _would_ be one, simply because of the lack of the licence. One of those “I’m not protected at the moment, and therefore everything will go wrong” kind of things.

Thankfully, both Ioan and the car made it to the house unscathed, so a definite win there. What was not a win was the usual cold shoulder Ioan gave him when they went back inside. Ianto had asked him what he wanted for supper, but Ioan had run off to the bedroom to go sulk on the bed. Ianto didn’t really know what to do about that, so he let Ioan pout himself into a nice little nap.

Ianto ordered pizza, both to get onto Ioan’s good side via bribe of his evident favourite food and because Ianto was absolutely rubbish at cooking. Jack had always done the home-cooked meals whenever they had had a night off. The best Ianto could do was… eggs. Only eggs, really. Not even noodles or waffles or any of that easy stuff. Nope. Just eggs.

The two of them said nothing to each other as they ate, as per usual. Ianto figured that there was no point in filling the silence with social niceties with a six-year-old. He wasn’t going to win Ioan over with small talk, especially when the boy was missing Jack.

They went to bed eventually (Ianto had let Ioan stay up a little while to watch some Bond, because why not?), and there was a big space in the bed where Jack normally rest. The two of them watched each other in silence, until Ioan fell asleep first.

It was the quietest night Ianto had ever faced in his life.

* * *

Two days passed with no word from Jack. Ianto tried not to worry, because that wouldn’t do him any good. If he panicked, Ioan would probably see, and then Ioan would panic, too. Ianto didn’t want that.

Instead, Ianto filled his time with busy work. Cleaning this and that, learning how to make spaghetti without causing too much mess, calling Gwen to ask how to make spaghetti without causing too much mess, cleaning up some more as he failed to make spaghetti without causing too much mess… He couldn’t be sure, but he swore he heard a giggle out of Ioan when the pan of sauce bubbled over and Ianto released a very… _interesting_ set of curses.

There were a few things that Ianto had to fill himself in on, like how to help Ioan get ready for school. That one Ianto could suss out easily enough, but things like how to make Ioan eat a non-pizza breakfast were less clear. And Jack hadn’t really explained how to help Ioan with his hearing aids, so Ianto had to look up videos on how to maintain and clean them so that Ioan could wear them to school. Jack _also_ hadn’t explained when to use an inhaler, but Ianto figured that was pretty self-explanatory.

That was why he had Ioan use it when Ioan started coughing on the first night but didn’t know what to do when the coughing didn’t ease off. It worried him a little before he decided it was just a cold. A cold that would go away soon enough, so no need to panic.

Except… it didn’t go away.

On the second night, after Ianto had successfully made eggs for the third meal in a row, he cleared the table and set out Ioan’s maths homework for the night. Ioan always finished it within minutes, leading Ianto to believe that they weren’t hard enough for the kid, so Ianto decided on getting a head start in preparing for the movie of the night (he was going to convince Ioan he was cool sooner or later, damn it).

He was resting his head on the back of the sofa and staring at the dark ceiling as he waited for Ioan to finish with his maths when soft, tentative footsteps came up behind him, paired with a few sniffs. Ianto turned around, prepared to get up to check the probably perfect homework and then return to turn on the film. That was not what happened. Instead, Ianto frowned curiously at Ioan, who was making himself appear as small as possible, which wasn’t hard to do, considering how small the child was already, and looking absolutely miserable.

“Ioan?” Ianto asked gently.

“I don’t feel good,” Ioan said.

“You don’t feel well?”

Ioan shook his head, then, to Ianto’s horror, burst into tears.

“You really _don’t_ feel well, do you?” Ianto said, getting up and around the sofa to take a better look at Ioan.

“No,” Ioan gasped between sobs. “Feel really _bad_.”

“Okay,” Ianto said. “Okay, um… There’s a thermometer in the bathroom, isn’t there? Let’s… um, let’s go get that, shall we?”

Ianto ushered Ioan to the bathroom quickly, not liking the wheezing sobs coming from the boy. Maybe another pump from the inhaler would help. First things first, though: temperature. He pulled out the thermometer and tried to remember which temperature Owen used to say was bad. High grade fevers were above… thirty-eight point one degrees, right?

So, thirty-nine point nine must be _bad_.

“Um,” Ianto said, panic starting to take over. He knew how to deal with rogue Weevils, but he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do for a child’s fever. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Feel bad,” was all the more Ioan could give him.

Ianto reached out a hand and took Ioan’s pulse, then felt his skin. His heartbeat was fast and his skin was sweaty. Plus, his wheezing hadn’t stopped with his crying, so that was no good.

“Right,” Ianto said, making a decision. “Can you go get your shoes and coat? We’re going to take a short trip to… a place that will make you feel better.”

Ioan gave a pathetic nod and slumped out of the bathroom. Ianto took a deep breath and pulled out his mobile, dialling Jack. He didn’t get through to Jack, only Jack’s receiver, so he put in a message.

“Jack. It’s me. Ianto. ‘Course, you already know who I am; you know my number. Probably have caller ID, too.” Ianto cursed under his breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, Ioan’s got a fever. A high one. Don’t panic. Really, don’t; I’ve got it. I’m going to take him to A and E. And then he’ll be fine. But wherever you are, you might want to head back, because I’m not… entirely sure… what I’m supposed to do with him. Um. Right. Bye.”

Then he left the bathroom to fetch his own shoes and coat, and hurried Ioan to the car to take him to A&E.

Honestly, Ianto didn’t know much about hospitals, as he’d only ever needed one once for a broken leg as a child, so he wasn’t certain what he was supposed to do. Would it matter that he wasn’t Ioan’s father? Well, he _was_ , but Jack had put down the name “Ianthe Jones” as Ioan’s “deceased mother” on his birth certificate, so legally, Ianto had no relation to Ioan.

“I’m not his father,” Ianto told the lady at the desk.

The woman looked between Ioan and Ianto, confused. Ianto mentally swore. Right. Ioan was a mini Ianto with curly hair.

“I’m dating his father,” Ianto said, wishing that Ioan had just looked like Jack instead. “But his father’s out of town at the moment, and I’m looking after him… Is that a problem?”

“Not really,” the woman said, still sounding sceptical. “If he needs care, he needs care, no matter who brings him in. Now, what’s wrong with him, again?”

They were sent to a room to wait for a doctor to come and check Ioan out, with a promise that it would only be a short while. Ianto hoped so, because Ioan’s breath was still more wheezy than it normally was. 

After a few anxious minutes, Ianto found Ioan staring up at him.

“What?” Ianto asked. “Is something else wrong?”

Ioan coughed instead of responding to the question.

“You said that…,” he said when he’d stopped coughing. His voice sounded rough. Was that from the wheezing or the coughing? “You said that you weren’t my dad.”

“Oh. I—yes,” Ianto said, perplexed.

“But you are, right?” Ioan asked, looking up at Ianto with awfully earnest eyes. “You’re my dad.”

“Yes,” Ianto said again. “I am.”

“Daddy has the mummy parts inside him to make me,” Ioan said.

“Well, yes… and no…”

Ianto was unable to elaborate more without knowing exactly what Jack had told Ioan about his birth. If Jack used the term “mum parts” to describe his womb, then Ianto didn’t know how to combat it, even if it was really just _wrong_.

“But you’re both my dads,” Ioan finished, heedless of Ianto. “Daddy’s my daddy and you’re my dead dad.”

“I… suppose.”

“And now you’re alive,” Ioan said.

“I am.”

Ioan looked up at him for a little longer, searching around Ianto’s face for… something Ianto wasn’t sure of. Then he deflated, hunching forward as his face reverted to its miserable expression.

“I _feel bad,”_ Ioan whimpered again.

“I know,” Ianto said. “But they’re going to fix it.”

Ioan let out a little whine and slumped sideways into Ianto, starting to cry again.

“Oh,” Ianto said uselessly. “ _Oh_.”

Then he reached a hand out and gently rubbed Ioan’s back, unsure if the feeling in his chest was warmth and joy, or fear and panic. Both, probably. He was glad that Ioan was connecting with him and terrified that Ioan was feeling this poorly.

A doctor joined them not long after that. He took normal readings, like temperature and heart rate, and then he pulled out a stethoscope and listened to Ioan’s chest. He made a frowny face, which did not soothe Ianto’s nerves at all. 

“I think it’s just pneumonia,” the doctor said.

“ _Just_ pneumonia?” Ianto repeated.

“Well, it’s obviously not a good thing, but it makes sense. He’s got asthma. And he’s had pneumonia before, when he was much younger.”

Ianto hadn’t heard about that. “Oh.”

“So, I’m certain he’ll come out just fine,” the doctor said, flashing the both of them a reassuring smile. “For now, I’m going to have him get a few tests. Is that alright with you?”

That last question was directed to Ioan, who nodded, eyes wide with terror. The good thing about Ianto being the only person Ioan knew, even as little as he did, was that Ioan clung onto _Ianto_ when strangers were around him. 

They took x-rays of Ioan’s chest to find where the infection was, and then ordered blood tests to determine the cause of the infection. Overall, it was draining for Ianto and utterly exhausting for Ioan, who had his hearing aids on for much longer than he usually wore them, which was, of course, on top of being sick as a dog and tired out of his wits. Ianto had to actually carry Ioan to the car. Imagine that! He, Ianto Jones, got to carry his son, Ioan Jones, to the car! _And_ through the chemist’s to get the antibiotics! Thank god Ioan was small for his age; Ianto wasn’t sure he had the muscle to carry a fully grown six-year-old for that long.

By the time they got home, it was nearing six in the morning. Ianto set a terribly-snoring Ioan into bed, only bothering to take off his shoes and coat. They were already going to be sleeping through the day, so why not sleep in clothes as well? Ianto thought it was a great idea as he collapsed into bed beside Ioan and drifted off to sleep himself.

* * *

Ianto was awoken by a slight prodding on his side sometime in the mid-afternoon.

“Mmm. What.” Ianto mumbled, shifting over to his side.

A warm breath was suddenly right by his ear. “My hearing aids died.”

“Huh?”

“My hearing aids,” Ioan whispered in his ear again. “They died.”

“Fuck,” Ianto groaned. He forgot to take those off with the shoes and coat.

He sat up and stretched before turning to Ioan. Ioan blinked up at him with pathetic puppy-dog eyes that Ianto just _knew_ came from Jack. Jack pulled off the kicked puppy-dog look like nobody else.

“It’s okay,” Ianto told Ioan. “You’re not going to school anyway.”

“I missed it,” Ioan mumbled.

“Yeah,” Ianto said, glancing over at the clock. “But you needed the sleep.”

“My throat hurts. I still feel bad.”

Ianto took Ioan to the bathroom to set aside the hearing aids (he’d look up how to change the battery correctly later) and to feed Ioan his medications. Poor kid looked horrible.

“We slept right through the day,” Ianto said later, peering out through the window to the darkness outside. “It was dark when we left, and it’s dark again now!”

Ioan just pushed some eggs around with his fork. Good thing eggs were easy on the throat, because that was what was for supper again. Ioan didn’t eat much of them, a testament to how terrible the kid was feeling, as they hadn’t eaten anything since last night.

“Are you done?” Ianto asked.

Ioan nodded.

“Right.”

He cleared up the table, taking the plates, forks, and glasses to the sink. He figured he could do the washing up later; right now he should do something about Ioan, who was slouching in his chair with a sad pout on his face.

“Come on,” Ianto told him. “We can go watch a film.”

Ioan didn’t really perk up the way Ianto had wanted him too, but at least he didn’t seem disinterested. “What one?”

“I dunno,” Ianto said. “Why don’t you go pick?”

Ioan slid down from his chair and shuffled toward the sitting room. Ianto followed closely behind, nearly stepping on Ioan when Ioan stopped abruptly in front of him.

“Can you get my Daisy and my Myfanwy and my Steggy?” he asked, peering imploringly up at Ianto.

“Sure,” Ianto said.

Ianto would not have had any clue what Ioan was talking about if not for knowing that “Daisy” was Ioan’s stuffed duck that he couldn’t be parted from when he was feeling upset. He was pretty sure Daisy was stored in Ioan’s room when he wasn’t with her, so Ianto took a peek around the room for her. Sure enough, Daisy sat first and foremost on a shelf of plush animals. Ianto tucked her under his arm and began looking for “Myfanwy” and “Steggy.”

Well.

“Myfanwy” was not hard to find at all. Ianto picked up the pterosaur and smiled at it. Oh, he hoped his own Myfanwy had made it out of that explosion. She’d be long gone by now, having grown accustomed to being fed over the years and therefore would have been starved, but he’d rather have her fly out her last days over her being blown to bits. He gave the stuffed pterosaur a fond pet, then tucked her aside with Daisy as he looked for “Steggy.”

The final plush wasn’t too difficult to stake out, either; the aptly named “Steggy” couldn’t be anything other than the large stegosaur that sat proudly on the edge of the assorted plush animals.

“Here you go,” Ianto said, handing the three of them down to Ioan on the sofa in the sitting room.

Ioan’s face lit up minutely, grabbing them from Ianto’s hands and somehow managing to snuggle all three of them to his tiny chest. Then Ioan’s face crumpled back into his miserable expression as he buried his head into the three plushes.

“What are we watching?” Ianto asked as he sat down beside Ioan.

“Star Wars.”

“I can see. Which one?”

“The Empire Strikes Back,” Ioan said, voice muffled by his creatures.

“Oh.” Ianto smiled down to Ioan. “That’s my favourite.”

Ioan blinked up at Ianto once, then turned his attention back to the film.

They made it halfway through the opening credits before Ioan realised he was a little too small to be holding all three plush animals, and had to set Steggy, the biggest of the three, down on the coffee table. He then held his Daisy and Myfanwy tighter and settled in on the sofa to watch the movie.

“I can’t hear it so good,” Ioan said after only five minutes.

Ianto glanced down at him. “Want the subtitles?”

The kid could probably read them; Jack said he was quite advanced in his reading skills.

“Yes, please.”

Ianto stood up and grabbed the remote, then spent the next quarter of an hour trying to figure out how to add subtitles to the damn film. He’d never done it before, and this particular remote was infuriating and confusing on purpose.

Finally, when Ianto had figured it out and restarted the movie, he flopped back down onto the sofa.

“There,” he said. “Done.”

Ioan tilted his head, surveying Ianto for a second. Then, to Ianto’s utter astonishment, he scooted closer to Ianto and leaned against him, snuggling in close.

For the next half hour, Ianto dared not move a muscle.

* * *

Ianto woke up towards the end of the film, just as Luke was claiming how impossible it was for Darth Vader to be his father. He let out a disgusted breath, not liking the taste of whatever the hell that was in his mouth.

A light snoring came from his chest, and for a second Ianto thought he was going mad, until he discovered… oh. Ioan was sleeping on top of him.

Ianto raised a hand and ever-so-gently stroked it through Ioan’s curly hair. Ioan stirred and Ianto froze, but then Ioan cuddled up even tighter, accidentally dropping his Daisy to the floor. Ianto stroked the hand through again, then, when there was no reaction to that touch, craned his neck forward to kiss Ioan’s head softly.

Then a hand came down softly onto Ianto’s hair and he nearly jumped off the sofa.

“Gentle,” Jack admonished in a whisper as Ioan let out a loud groan and dug his fingers into Ianto’s chest.

“ _Ouch_.”

“Yeah. He does that.”

Ianto frowned at Jack. “When did you get back?”

“Five minutes ago. Or so.”

The look on Jack’s face was… priceless. Loving and gentle and… oh, hell. First Ioan and now Jack. Ianto wasn’t exactly sure how to deal with all the tenderness he felt tonight.

“Empire Strikes Back,” Jack noted, tearing his eyes from Ianto to look at the screen. “That’s his favourite, you know.”

“Is it?” Ianto asked. “Huh.”

Jack’s hand kept weaving through Ianto’s hair, eyes tracking whatever was going on onscreen. Ianto kept his own gaze on Jack, and therefore noted the exact moment Jack’s mood changed. The hand stopped dragging through Ianto’s hair as Jack’s eyes found something by either Ianto or Ioan, and his expression tightened.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked, tone on edge.

“What?”

“He’s got Myfanwy,” Jack said, nodding down to the pterosaur. “He only holds her when he’s having a really bad time. She comforts him most. So, what’s wrong?”

“Didn’t you get my calls?” Ianto asked.

“No. Mobile was off. _What’s_ _wrong_?”

“Pneumonia,” Ianto said. “He’s on antibiotics. Should be fine in a week or so.”

“Oh, no,” Jack said. “Not again…”

“He’ll be fine,” Ianto reassured him.

Jack didn’t look convinced.

“They said he’ll be fine,” Ianto repeated again. “ _Really_.”

Instead of responding, Jack leant down to kiss Ianto.

“Ew,” Jack said when he drew back.

“Sorry? You kiss me and say, ‘ _ew_?’”

“Did you eat eggs?”

Ianto glowered at him. “You know that’s all I can make.”

“Not judging,” Jack said, holding his hands up in defence.

“Sure.”

There was a pause for a moment. A big grin started spreading on Jack’s face.

“What?” Ianto asked.

“Nothing,” Jack said quickly. “It’s just…”

He gestured down to Ioan.

“I told you,” Jack said.

Ianto looked to Ioan, still sleeping on Ianto’s chest with his tight grip on Ianto and Myfanwy.

“Yes, I suppose you did,” Ianto murmured.

Jack kissed his head, then rounded the sofa. He picked up Ioan’s Daisy from the ground and handed her to Ianto, who took her just as Jack laid a hand on Ioan’s back and started to wake him.

“Hey, kiddo,” Jack said when Ioan blearily blinked himself into semi-awareness.

“ _Daddy_.”

Jack picked Ioan up from on top of Ianto, holding him close for a moment.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Jack said.

Ioan made a moaning sound from in Jack’s arms, but one of willingness, not protest.

Ianto got up and followed them to the bedroom, where for the second night in a row, Ioan was put to bed in clothes. This time, though, Ioan was awake enough to try scrabbling over Jack.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“Middle,” Ioan mumbled, finally dragging his tired little body over top of Jack.

Ianto’s heart did a weird little dance when Ioan snuggled in beside both Ianto and Jack, one tiny hand curling itself around Ianto’s index finger and the other over Jack’s bicep.

“ _Oh_ ,” Ianto said to himself.

Within minutes, Ioan was back asleep, and Jack not long after, but Ianto was wide awake. Unlike Jack, he had been sleeping for most of the day, and unlike Ioan, he was perfectly healthy. He wasn’t ready to fall back asleep again. Instead, he had the time to sit and think.

Jack really had been right, hadn’t he? Once Ioan had… well… “tried him,” so to speak, he really went in. Sleeping on Ianto’s chest was a big step from throwing suspicious looks around the room. Ioan evidently did realise how much he liked things after he got to know them. Of course, it could be circumstantial; Ioan had been sick, tired, and missing Jack, and could have been just clinging to the next best thing… But then again… this? Sleeping between them? Surely meant something, meant Ioan liked Ianto.

And then there was what Gwen had said. Addition, not subtraction. “You’re both my dads,” was what he had told Ianto at the hospital. _Both_. Ianto and Jack. His dads. That… that _definitely_ meant something. Something big. And Ianto…

Oh, Ianto was loving this kid more and more every day. _His son_.

In the stillness of the night, Ianto stroked a thumb down the soft hand encasing his finger, and smiled to himself.

* * *

Christmas was not an event celebrated in this household. Well. Not entirely, anyway. Jack said it had something to do with the fact that it wasn’t a holiday on his homeworld. He’d gotten used to it on twenty-first century Earth, of course, but he wanted to raise Ioan in a very Boeshanian way.

“I send gifts out to everyone else, because it’s expected,” Jack told Ianto on the twenty-first of December. “But I ask them not to send any back.”

This year, Jack was sending out gifts to the Cooper-Williamses and the Joneses (the London Joneses, obviously). Gwen was getting a set of earrings and Rhys was being gifted a weekend away with Gwen in the Alps. Jack had tacked on playing babysitter to the Cooper-Williams children to the gift, which Ianto thought was hilarious; he’d love to see Jack “babysitting,” especially if it was Gwen’s kids. Those each got a plush animal: Anwen a dog that either looked like a Basset Hound or a Rottweiler, and Evan a calico cat.

To Francine Jones, Jack had given a bracelet, and Tish would be receiving a lovely spa day. Martha got… well. What Martha got was what Martha got. Whoever this Mickey was would be pleased.

Gwen and Francine were the only people not to listen to Jack’s plea that they not send gifts. Every year they apparently ignored Jack and sent Ioan a gift. It meant Ioan got a total of three gifts a year.

“I get him one, so he doesn’t feel left out when he goes back to school,” Jack admitted.

Possibly because Jack was an enormous pushover when it came to his son, Ianto figured. But he didn’t say that out loud.

“Well, I was raised a Presbyterian, so he’s getting more than one this year,” Ianto said.

“You’re not Presbyterian.”

“I said I was _raised_ one.”

“And you’re an atheist now,” Jack pointed out. “It doesn’t make sense to celebrate it anymore.”

“Still,” Ianto said. “Receiving four presents won’t kill him.”

Jack sighed. “Fine.”

And Ianto, being Ianto, knew exactly what to get for Ioan.

Christmas had arrived in no time at all, and Ianto was fairly proud of his gifts to others.

Rhiannon and the kids were expected to receive a tidy sum of money from an anonymous source, because Ianto still hadn’t worked out a way to reinsert himself in their lives. He’d figure it out eventually, but at the moment, he was more focused on working on his own life than theirs.

On top of Jack’s gifts to Gwen and Rhys was another from Ianto; a necklace for Gwen, a toy lorry for Rhys, and the promise not to let Jack babysit the kids without him around. Their children were getting lots of toy cars. Ianto made sure that no lorries were in those. Wouldn’t want Evan to steal Rhys’s or vice versa.

The London Joneses still weren’t that close with Ianto yet, but he had a feeling they might be eventually, so he couldn’t skip them in his gift-giving. Thanks to help from Martha, Francine and Tish would both recieve reservations to their favourite restaurants. Martha herself was getting a pair of earrings _and_ a matching necklace, both with emeralds, her favourite stone, because it was a bit unfair for her only other present to be… Anyway, she deserved them.

Jack did make a nice breakfast on Christmas morning, but Ianto suspected that was mainly for his benefit, not Jack or Ioan’s. At any rate, the crepes were good. Ioan inhaled like twenty of them.

“First we’re going to unwrap Aunt Gwen and Nanna’s gifts so that I can take a picture of you with them and then tell them off yet again,” Jack told Ioan.

Gwen’s gift was opened first. The pair of toy cars had Ianto laughing, which confused Jack to no end until Ianto explained. Ioan was very excited to add the cars to his collection that would no doubt grow faster than ever, now that Ioan’s misplaced (stolen) cars could be returned to him without a fuss. 

“Smile and say ‘thank you!’” Jack instructed Ioan.

“Thank you!” said Ioan as Jack snapped a picture with his mobile.

Ianto snorted. Now that was a scene he thought he’d never see.

Francine’s present was a lovely blanket, made of multiple shades of blue and soft as could be. Ioan wrapped himself in it and grinned cheerily as Jack took his picture. Then he spread out his arms and beat them as if the blanket draping down from them made wings. He said he was a butterfly. Jack was very approving of this. Ianto felt as though his present for Ioan was even more justified after the moment.

Jack’s present to Ianto was another stuffed dinosaur.

“A diplodocus,” Ioan breathed. “Yes!”

He launched himself into Jack’s arms, essentially smacking Jack in the face with the new diplodocus, but Jack didn’t seem to mind. Jack kissed Ioan’s forehead.

“I love you very much,” Jack told him.

“Love you,” Ioan said back, voice thickened through the fabric of Jack’s shirt.

“Go open your last present,” Jack chuckled after Ioan had clung to him for a good few minutes.

Ioan bounced off of Jack and scowled in confusion.

“I only have three,” Ioan said.

“You have four this year,” Jack said.

Ianto smiled at Ioan. “I gave you one.”

“Oh,” Ioan said thoughtfully. “Okay.”

Ianto handed him the gift that he’d wrapped and rewrapped three times over, just to make sure the wrapping was absolutely perfect. Not that it mattered, really, as Ioan just tore through it like a t-rex through its prey.

“Wow,” Jack said as Ioan revealed his gift, and Ianto smiled to himself.

“Planes,” Ioan gasped as he looked down at the gigantic book on aeroplanes and the build-it-yourself model aeroplane kit (one of those World War II ones that Ianto couldn’t ever recall the name of, but Jack knew by heart). “ _Cool_.”

He looked up at Ianto.

“I _love_ planes!” he exclaimed.

“You do?” Jack asked him, puzzlement written all over his face.

“He’s obsessed with flying. All his stuffed toys are either dinosaurs or things that fly,” Ianto murmured to Jack. “He pretends his cars can fly. And I’m pretty sure I overheard him talking about being a pilot to Anwen once.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “How come I didn’t know that?”

Ianto also wondered why Jack didn’t know that. How had Group Captain Jack Harkness of the RAF missed the fact that his own son loved flying just as much as he did?

“I suppose you just weren’t looking,” Ianto said.

Jack frowned at him, but it slowly turned into a smile.

“You’re going to be a great parent, you know,” Jack said.

Ianto had years of practice of keeping his blush to himself, but he might have accidently let that one slip through. “Oh. Well. Thank you.”

“Now, where’s _my_ present?” Jack teased.

“You’ll get that later,” Ianto said. He gave a light cough and nodded in Ioan’s direction. “When someone isn’t, ah, _present_.”

Jack beamed.

“Dad, can you help me build this?” Ioan asked eagerly.

It took Ianto a second to figure out whom Ioan was addressing. The smirk slid from his face and he turned slowly to Ioan, who was looking up at him with an earnest gaze and the model kit in his hand.

“Um,” Ianto said ineloquently. “Yes. _Yes_ , certainly.”

Ioan grinned, then went to grab his diplodocus and his blanket, wrapping both himself and his new dinosaur back up as he plopped to the ground and started flipping through his book.

“Well,” Jack said quietly in a shocked voice. “Seems like I should amend my statement. You’re a good parent already.”

“Huh,” was all Ianto could say.

Dad.

What a great sound that had.

* * *

“ _Why_ are you singing that song?” Ianto groaned.

Jack cut off to look over his shoulder at Ioan. “Why are we singing it, kiddo?”

“’Cause it’s a Scotland song and we’re going to Scotland!” Ioan crowed from the back of the car.

“Oh, great.” Ianto sighed. “Don’t you know any Welsh songs?”

“Yes, he does. But we’re not going to Wales, we’re going to—”

Ioan stopped Jack midsentence by singing “Sosban Fach” very loudly over top of Jack. His voice was high and clear in a chilling sort of way. Ianto wondered how that would change when Ioan’s voice dropped. For now, though, it was… _sweet_.

“You taught him Welsh songs?” Ianto asked Jack when Ioan had finished.

“No. I _played_ him Welsh songs. He learned them himself.”

Ianto peered to the back of the car, where Ioan was staring out the window at the rolling countryside, humming “Scotland the Brave” to himself.

“Okay, Ioan,” Jack called back, and Ioan sat up straighter. “One more time, from the top!”

“Oh, god,” Ianto moaned.

“We could always play one of Gwen’s Raffi discs,” Jack suggested.

“No!”

“Right, that settles it, then. Ready Ioan? ‘ _By yon bonnie banks_ —'”

By Ianto’s total, they sang “Loch Lomond” seventeen times, “Will Ye Go Lassie Go” ten and a half times, a few other songs a couple of times each, and made up their own lyrics to “Scotland the Brave” in no less than eight different ways. Then Ioan got tired and passed out in the back seat and serenaded Jack and Ianto with loud snores.

“Pretty cute, isn’t he?” Jack asked.

“Yes. Keep your eyes on the road before you kill us all,” Ianto said, because Jack kept turning his _whole body_ to face the back seat to get a look at Ioan.

“Spoilsport.”

Silence descended upon them, permeated only by Ioan’s snores, and Ianto took in the beauty of the snow outside.

“So, why are we headed up to Scotland?” he asked after a while.

“I thought I’d already told you,” Jack said. “Archie needs help with the Torchwood Archives over in Torchwood House.”

“Didn’t you say UNIT was in charge of Torchwood now? Why don’t they just do it?”

“They are. But they don’t like to help us,” Jack explained. “They established a permanent residence in Torchwood House about… a year ago? Yeah, a year ago. They only sent over one archivist, though, and he’s a complete ass, so Archie doesn’t like to work alone with him when the time comes for the annual overhaul. Anyway, I thought you’d like to go this year. I’m sure you miss archiving.”

“I do,” Ianto said.

“We’re on section… oh. Shoot. Hang on. A, B… C… D… E… F… G… H… Section ‘H’, I believe.”

“I’m glad you know the alphabet,” Ianto said dryly.

“Look, it’s easy to forget which one we’re on,” Jack said. “They all blend together, in the end.”

“I’m sure.”

“You’ll see,” Jack warned him. “It’ll be dull as hell.”

“I thought you wanted me to go because I missed archiving. Now you’re saying I’ll hate it.”

“I’m not—that’s not what I’m saying,” Jack said, throwing Ianto a fondly exasperated look. “You know that.”

Ianto smiled to himself and turned back to watch the world spin by outside.

Torchwood House hadn’t changed much since Ianto had last seen it. That was about eight years ago. Maybe eight and a half. Whatever the stretch was, the building hadn’t changed much. Ivies crawled up to the top of the stone walls and rose bushes adorned the bottom. Almost ideal, if one liked that sort of thing. Definitely picturesque.

Archie greeted them inside the inner courtyard along with some young man who looked down his nose at Ianto. Ianto had to give him some credit for that, as that was clearly hard to do, considering Ianto was taller than the man. Edwin Abbott was the man’s name, and Ianto disliked him immensely, and it was evident Jack did as well. Ioan said a quiet “hello” to Archie and that was all, running away from Jack and Ianto to “find the aminals.”

“I’ll go get him,” Ianto told Jack when they were about to unload the bags from the car.

“Oh, sure, give yourself the easy job, why don’t you?”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Need I remind you that I loaded and unloaded enough cars in my life for you?”

“I was teasing,” Jack said. “Go get him. Tell him he can play with the ducks or whatever later.”

Ianto ducked away from Jack’s peck on his forehead, accepting the swat of his arse in its place. There was no question of a fuck in the Archives later; for some reason, being around files and dangerous artefacts never failed to… get a certain captain up.

He found Ioan crouching in the corner of the courtyard, near loose stack of hay. Why Torchwood House felt the need to continue to act as if it was still being run in the nineteenth century, Ianto would never understand. That hay was probably going to make Ioan need his inhaler pretty soon.

“Hello, kitties,” Ioan was saying to the two fat cats laying in the hay. “Do you remember me?”

The fluffy tuxedo cat evidently did, as it butted Ioan’s forehead with its own. The marmalade cat paid Ioan no heed and started to groom its own bum.

“Good kitty,” Ioan said to the tuxedo cat.

Ianto smiled to himself as Ioan reached out a tentative hand to the cat, and when the cat made no visible protest, started petting it gently.

“Good kitty,” Ioan repeated.

“Hey, um…” Jack always called Ioan “kiddo” or “kid,” but Ianto didn’t feel he had the right to do that yet. “Ioan?”

Ioan looked up at Ianto with wide eyes. Shit. That would never not be cute.

“Look!” Ioan exclaimed to Ianto. “The kitties remember me!”

“It seems they do,” Ianto said, squatting down beside Ioan.

“They like me. Do they like you?”

“I dunno,” Ianto said. “I suppose we’ll have to see.”

Ianto held out a hand for the marmalade to inspect. It sniffed the hand, then resumed its grooming without further contemplation. The tuxedo cat, when given its turn to sniff the hand, allowed Ianto to pet it. With both Ioan and Ianto’s hands petting it softly, it began purring.

“It’s rumblin’!” Ioan squealed.

For a moment, Ianto wondered if Ioan’s hearing aids could pick up the sound of the purring, but then decided not to ask. Ioan seemed pretty content with just the, well, _rumblin’_.

“Okay, say goodbye to the cats. We have to help Ja— _Daddy_ —" Ianto felt he would never get used to saying that “—take out the bags from the car.”

“Awww,” Ioan pouted.

He put his lips on the fat tuxedo cat’s head and planted a smacking kiss there. Oh, hell. If the hay didn’t trigger his asthma, the cat dander certainly would.

“Bye bye, kitties,” Ioan said sadly.

“Yes, bye cats,” Ianto said, taking Ioan’s hand and walking him away.

Sure enough, Ioan was coughing up a fit by the time they had their bags unpacked and their room situated. Jack had him sit on the bed and use his inhaler, glaring at Ianto all the while. Ianto would admit it was sort of his fault, encouraging Ioan to sit around and pet the cats, but he refused to apologise for letting Ioan enjoy himself.

Jack was devastated (and Ianto equally so) to learn that there would be no sex in the Archives. Of course, half of that was on Jack, because he point blank refused to send Ioan out of the room to go help Archie and Mr. Abbott. Then again, it wasn’t as if Ioan would have willingly left them in the first place.

“We’ll have to keep him home next year,” Jack muttered to Ianto as they watched Ioan read in the corner.

“I’m not sure that’ll go so well,” Ianto replied. (Gwen said it was separation anxiety. Whether she meant Ioan or Jack, Ianto wasn’t certain.)

Jack sighed.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait twelve more years,” Ianto said.

“Twelve? I already waited seven!”

“That wasn’t waiting; you didn’t know I was coming back.”

“Whatever,” Jack grumbled. “I’m not waiting that long to have fun Archive-sex.”

However long Jack was unwilling to wait, he would just have to stick it out for this trip, anyway. There was no prying Ioan from either of their sides.

* * *

On the second to last morning they stayed at Torchwood House, Ianto woke in a lot of pain. Ioan, who now constantly slept in the middle of the bed between Jack and Ianto, tended to grab onto whatever bits that he could reach of the people next to him. Sometimes that meant he held a hand, clawed onto a bicep, draped over a chest… or sometimes it meant pinching someone’s _ear_ like a goddamn hermit crab. That kid had one hell of a grip.

Once he had managed to painfully extract himself from Ioan’s death-grip, he got himself up for a shave. Jack had convinced him to grow out a beard during their stay in Scotland. Probably because he knew that this was his one chance to see Ianto with it without it having any affect on their sex life, which was still currently non-existent, thanks to one Ioan Jones. Anyway, it had been four days, and Ianto wanted it off. He was going into the New Year freshly shaven, no matter how much Jack complained later.

A sickening jolt ran through him as he remembered that it was, indeed, New Years Eve. He looked back at Jack, who was open-mouth snoring on the bed. Ioan had turned over after Ianto had detached from him, clinging himself to Jack’s arm instead.

Ianto supposed that answered his question; he had wondered how Jack had gotten through those six New Years without Ianto. Not that Ianto wanted to overstate his importance, or anything like that, but Jack had always been rubbish on New Years Eve and Day ever since the whole Alex Incident, and so Ianto used to trade his free time both of those days to help Jack get through it all. Ianto supposed that since he’d been gone, Ioan, however unknowingly, had been filling his role.

That didn’t mean that, just because both Ianto and Ioan were here for him this go ‘round, Jack’s New Years would go without much fuss. No, Ianto had learned that no matter what good mood Jack was in at the start, it always soured. The best Ianto and Ioan could hope for was that Jack didn’t… do something rash.

Ianto sighed, then went off for his shower and a shave. If he was going to tackle today head on, best do it as fresh as possible.

About halfway through his shower, he received the fright of his life as the door opened and Ioan was ungraciously plopped under the spray alongside him. After regaining control over his racing heart, Ianto reminded himself he was not going to shout at Jack today, even if Jack was directly ignoring the argument that they’d had last week.

“He is not showering with me!” Ianto had said.

“It saves water!” Jack countered.

Really, as much as Ianto loved Ioan, Ianto did like a bit of privacy now and again, and it seemed the only time he could get that anymore was in the shower.

Ianto sighed again and looked down at Ioan, who grinned up at him. Fuck. Looked like he was showering with the kid no matter what.

Ten minutes later, after an altercation with a slippery shampoo bottle, Ianto and Ioan were both clean, with Ianto dressed and Ioan swaddled in a large fluffy towel that dwarfed him. Jack was nowhere to be found, and Ianto had to go searching for Ioan’s clean clothes on his own. God, they had made such a mess of this room. Ianto normally endeavoured to be tidier, but this time it had evidently slipped away from him.

Jack didn’t appear until well after Ioan was dressed and breakfasted. Ianto didn’t bother to ask where he’d gone; there was no point in it. Instead, he silently passed Jack a coffee that was, for once, not made by Ianto. The kitchen staff could produce fairly decent coffee. If they couldn’t, Ianto wouldn’t have let Jack _touch_ the stuff. Ianto was a coffee purist to the core.

Ianto decided today would be as good a day as any to finally let Ioan help them in the Archives. He had been begging Jack and Ianto for the last few days, and Ianto figured that any amount of time Jack spent helping Ioan learn to archive was better spent than letting Jack mope.

“This is just an ‘h’ with a bunch of ‘z’s after it!” Ioan exclaimed after reading his first file. “That’s stupid! It’s not a real word!”

“The Hzzzzz are a kind and generous race that should be respected,” Jack chided him. “Be polite and say nice words. Now, put it in the ‘resort’ pile, please.”

“No, hand it to me,” Ianto said, taking the file from Ioan’s eager hands. “I know where it goes.”

“Can I go with you?” Ioan begged. “Pleeeeaaaase?”

Ianto shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

“Yes!”

“Don’t touch anything you shouldn’t.”

“I won’t!” Ioan promised.

The file for the Hzzzzz was, oddly enough, second to last in the ‘H’ section. The last file was the Hzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz file, which was an offshoot of the Hzzzzz file. It covered the appropriate way to begin a conversation with the Hzzzzz, and it translated into something along the lines of: “You are the Hzzzzz, we are not, and we wish to commence diplomatic dialogue with you.” Ianto knew that because he had once been present to Jack actually using the word to introduce himself before telling the Hzzzzz to “scram, please; you’re scaring the local wildlife.”

Ianto snorted as he remembered all the inflections and tonal shifts Jack had to use in that word alone. He had sounded like a goddamn bumble bee. Maybe that was tonight’s bedtime story, Ianto mused. Now that he was allowed to tell Ioan bedtime stories, he had plenty to tell Ioan about his other father.

Ioan followed Ianto through the Archives for the rest of the day. It was like having a shadow. It was possibly the best time Ianto had ever spent archiving, ever. Ioan would read the file names and numbers aloud for Ianto, Ianto would tell Ioan where they should go, then the two of them would find the file’s rightful place. Sometimes, that meant going to the room that Archie and Mr. Abbott were currently inhabiting, and that unfortunately meant interacting with the two crotchety men. Ioan would plaster himself to Ianto, hiding behind his legs until they could retreat back to the safety of the “Ht”-“Hz” room.

Jack was having less of a fun time. Ianto kept catching him staring off into nothing, files slowly starting to slip from his fingers. Ianto always grabbed the files before they fell and gave Jack a quick kiss to remind him that Ianto was there for him, no matter what.

Dinner came surprisingly fast, and Ioan absolutely gorged himself on the pies. Jack ate nothing, though, so Ianto supposed it balanced out.

“We leave tomorrow,” Jack reminded Ianto as Ioan started munching on the biscuits that some of the kitchen staff had snuck him.

Ianto nodded. “Do you always leave on New Years Day?”

“Not always,” Jack said. “The dates always change year to year. I think last year was when UNIT made the decision to just pick a week and then keep that for the rest of the overhaul.”

“They settled in and decided they didn’t want you and Archie trampling about whenever you wanted?” Ianto guessed.

Jack shrugged. “Probably. Though I do know the first year we did the ‘A’ section in the spring.”

Jack’s face grew pained, so Ianto figured they needed a change of pace. He packed Ioan’s biscuits up into a serviette and then ushered Jack and Ioan to their room, where they had a nice feast on the biscuits. Jack even managed to eat one, after lots of persuasion from Ioan.

“Okay,” Jack said abruptly after the last of the biscuits had vanished into Ioan’s greedy little face. “Brush your teeth.”

“Awww,” Ioan complained. “I don’t wanna go to bed! Wanna stay up for the New Year hour!”

“You’re not staying up until midnight,” Ianto said.

“Why not?” Ioan cried. “I’ll be good!”

Ianto looked up at Jack, who had an unreadable expression on his face. Ianto sighed.

“Alright, fine,” he said. “But only if you promise to behave.”

“I will!” Ioan said quickly. “I promise!”

“Okay, then, go brush your teeth.”

Ioan practically sprinted to the bathroom. Ianto kissed the side of Jack’s head, then trailed after Ioan and found him in the bathroom squeezing far too much toothpaste onto his toothbrush.

“It got stuck,” he said, blinking sheepishly up at Ianto.

Ianto took the tube of paste and the toothbrush from Ioan and began to undo the mess Ioan had made. When it was fixed to the best of Ianto’s abilities, Ianto handed the toothbrush back, then got out Jack’s toothbrush, as well as his own, and started loading those up with toothpaste, too. Jack joined them as they were halfway through brushing their teeth, standing behind Ianto and Ioan as he began working on his own teeth.

Ianto looked into the mirror and tried to keep his smile to himself. It was the little things like this that reminded Ianto that he belonged here now. Well, not here as in Torchwood House, but here as in with Jack and Ioan. The three of them fit perfectly together in that mirror.

“Aah!” Ioan shouted, drawing Ianto from his thoughts.

“What?” Ianto asked, immediately concerned.

“Lookit!” Ioan spun around and opened his mouth to Jack and Ianto. “’y eeh aw gwowing in!”

“Talk normally,” Jack told him.

“My teeth are growing in!” Ioan restated. “See?”

He opened his mouth again, and, sure enough, there were two stumps of new teeth bursting through the gums.

“They’re bigger than they were yesterday!” Ioan said proudly, which Ianto had to agree with, to his confusion.

“Fifty-first century teeth fall out and grow in differently,” Jack mumbled to Ianto.

“Right,” Ianto said slowly.

“I’m gonna have teeth soon!” Ioan crowed, turning back to the mirror and beaming widely at it.

“Shit,” Ianto swore under his breath to Jack. “He’s got your smile.”

“I know,” Jack said, his lips twitching ever-so-slightly upwards. “Your looks and my smile. God help anyone he meets in his twenties. As long as he keeps those curls, nobody stands a chance.”

Jack’s mood improved slightly after that, which Ianto was immensely grateful for. As long as they could get through the night with this new attitude, everything would be fine. Ianto kept an eye on Jack the entire time they played Old Maid, Ioan’s favourite game, and with every turn, Jack’s mood just continued getting brighter. Of course, that meant he became very sneaky and used some of his conman skills to dupe Ianto and Ioan, who always ended up losing. Ioan was very sportsmanlike when he lost, because he usually shouted a confused and excited “ _what_!” and then started laughing his head off every time. Actually, Ianto was pretty sure Jack kept slipping Ioan the old maid card for that reason alone: just to see Ioan giggle every time he lost. Ianto wouldn’t admit it on his life, but that’s exactly what he was doing, too.

Before they knew it, there was just ten minutes to midnight. A slight change in the air around them, though Ianto wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because the smile had changed on Jack’s face.

“Come check this out,” Jack said, beckoning Ianto and Ioan to the window.

Ioan hopped up and ran after Jack, but Ianto followed with a little more caution. He jumped as he saw the first firework outside the window, but Ioan oohed in awe.

“I don’t know if they do this every year,” Jack said, “but we saw it last year when we came up.”

Ianto decided he’d ask some UNIT officer about it tomorrow, but for now, he was just pleased that Torchwood House came with its own lightshow.

“I can’t see them!” Ioan cried as a red one burst just barely in Ianto’s line of sight.

“Come here,” Jack said, reaching down and swooping Ioan up into his arms just in time to see the next firework go off.

“It’s blue!”

For the next nine or so minutes, the three of them pointed out the colours and the shapes of the fireworks to each other, commenting on which ones they preferred. Ioan liked the blue ones and Ianto liked the red ones, but Jack had an affinity for the large gold ones.

Then, somewhere down the hall, wherever the UNIT officers were partying, there began a loud countdown from ten. Ianto looked at Jack and Jack looked at Ianto, and when the number hit “one,” they met in a kiss.

A dozen fireworks burst all at once outside, or maybe it was in Ianto’s mind, but all Ianto knew was that this kiss was more important than any other kiss he’d ever had in his life. A promise was made in that kiss. A promise of love. Romantic and sexual, platonic and familial, all in one. Better than any outrageous New Years resolution or frivolous proposal.

A small arm wrapped itself around Ianto’s neck, and Ianto and Jack broke apart simultaneously to look down at Ioan, who was grinning up at them. He pulled himself closer to Jack and Ianto, tightening his grip on both of their necks. Jack and Ianto spared each other a glance, and a smile broke out on Ianto’s face as they pressed their foreheads to Ioan’s temples.

Outside, someone began singing “Auld Lang Syne” to near perfection. Ianto would later be shocked to learn that it was actually _Archie_ who had sung it, but at the moment, he didn’t give a damn who it was. All he cared about were the arms of the people he loved wrapped around him, his son clinging to his neck and his lover gently holding his waist.

Come what may in the next year, or decade, or even century, but Ianto Jones would always have this: his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recycling and projecting are my best friends. References to other of my fics are everywhere in this baby. Also, asthmatic child who gets themselves sick all the time? That was me, babes. All me.  
> And because I literally _could not_ let go of Jack and Ioan, I had written a sequel that I should be posting soon in the upcoming year.  
> Thank you so much for reading! Happy New Year!


End file.
